First Reading of Chapter One of the Upper Xici: Heaven and Earth Take Their Places, and Virtue Is Formed Through Ease and Simplicity

This article was translated from the original Chinese by AI. Nuances may differ from the source.

Heaven is exalted, Earth is lowly; thus Qian and Kun are established. The low and the high are set out; thus the noble and the humble take their places. Movement and stillness have their constancy; thus the firm and the yielding are distinguished. Things gather by kind and creatures divide by group; thus fortune and misfortune arise. In Heaven images are formed, on Earth shapes are formed; thus change is made visible.

Therefore the firm and the yielding rub against one another, and the eight trigrams stir one another into motion. They are drummed by thunder and lightning, moistened by wind and rain; the sun and moon revolve, one cold season and one hot season follow. The Way of Qian forms the male, the Way of Kun forms the female. Qian knows the great beginning; Kun brings things to completion. Qian knows through ease, Kun is capable through simplicity. Being easy, it is easy to know; being simple, it is easy to follow. Being easy to know, it wins closeness; being easy to follow, it achieves merit. Having closeness, it can endure; having merit, it can grow great. What can endure is the virtue of the worthy; what can grow great is the achievement of the worthy. Through ease and simplicity, the principle of all under Heaven is attained; and when the principle of all under Heaven is attained, one's place is formed in the very midst of it.

I. Not a Set of Names First, but Heaven and Earth Seen First

The opening of the Upper Xici does not begin with divination, nor with the milfoil stalks, nor with any single hexagram or line, nor does it first lay out the rites and institutions of human society. It first turns the human gaze toward what lies between Heaven and Earth: "Heaven is exalted, Earth is lowly; thus Qian and Kun are established." The weight of this sentence lies precisely in its refusal to hastily reduce the Yi to a mere technique. It first points out that what the Yi confronts is a world already manifest, already in motion, a world one may take part in but may not arbitrarily fabricate. A person looks up and sees Heaven, bends down and treads upon Earth, is born between the two, labors between the two; marriage and childbearing, sacrifice and warfare, covenant-making, advance and retreat, life and death -- all of it happens between the two. Heaven and Earth are not one item of knowledge among others; they are the prior condition within which all knowledge and all action can unfold at all.

Here, "exalted" and "lowly" are, first of all, above and below -- the most immediate experience a person has of standing between Heaven and Earth. Heaven is above, Earth is below; sun, moon, and stars move above, grasses, trees, birds, and beasts take form below; rain descends from above, the hundred grains grow from below. Standing within the pre-Qin context, one must not rush to read "exalted and lowly" merely as the high and low of human power, nor may one empty it into a bodiless conceptual game. It arises from an order seen by the eye and trodden by the body: what is above covers, what is below carries; what covers lets images hang down, what carries brings shapes to completion. The establishing of Qian and Kun is established precisely within this relation of mutual opposition and mutual completion. Qian is not a Qian suspended alone, apart from Kun; nor is Kun a Kun self-sufficient, apart from Qian. Without Earth, Heaven's bestowing has nothing to complete it; without Heaven, Earth's generating has nothing to open it. Because the two are distinct, they can stand opposite one another; because the two need one another, they can complete one another.

The Book of Songs (Shijing) says, "Heaven gave birth to the multitudes of people; for every thing there is its norm," joining generation and norm together. The generation of a thing is not an indiscriminate jumble; where there is a thing, there is its norm, and where there is a norm, there is an order that can be followed. The Book of Documents (Shangshu) stresses "reverence for Heaven" and "according with the seasons," and this too is not a summons to flee toward some wholly unapproachable realm, but a demand that in governance and in daily affairs one not go against the seasons of Heaven nor harm the people's livelihood. The Master said, "What does Heaven ever say$1 The four seasons proceed, the hundred creatures are born" -- what makes Heaven worthy of reverence is not much speech, but that the four seasons do not err and the hundred creatures are nurtured together. Looking back from this at "Heaven is exalted, Earth is lowly," the exalted is no empty title, and the lowly no name of disgrace. The exalted one presides through its brightness and clarity; the lowly one bears all through its breadth and depth. Brightness-and-clarity and breadth-and-depth each have their own virtue, and neither can take the other's place.

The Yi takes Qian and Kun as its gateway precisely because every human situation lies between initiating and completing, between setting forth and bringing to fruition, between vigorous motion and generous bearing. A thought about to act is the direction of Qian; a matter brought to completion is the function of Kun. The issuing of a governmental command is a beginning; whether the people find peace in their dwellings and give their utmost strength is completion. The sprouting of a virtuous intention is a beginning; whether it accumulates through daily practice and reaches into human relations is completion. To know only how to initiate without being able to bring to completion is forever mere empty sound; to know only how to receive without direction easily falls into mere habit. Once Qian and Kun are established, this does not nail the world down into two fixed blocks, but rather gives the myriad affairs and things two visible poles, a fundamental measure by which to go forth and return, to open and to close.

Thus what this opening establishes is not a rigid schema, but an upright posture for viewing the world: first acknowledge Heaven and Earth, then settle human affairs; first see the differences, then understand mutual completion; first revere the order that already exists, then discuss what one may do within it. What the Most High (Laozi) said -- "Man models himself on Earth, Earth models itself on Heaven, Heaven models itself on the Dao, the Dao models itself on what-is-so-of-itself (ziran)" -- rises level by level, and it too begins with man not placing himself first. If a person takes his own likes and dislikes as the measure of Heaven and Earth, he cannot possibly know Qian and Kun; only if a person is willing to set aside private intent and observe the motion of Heaven and the generation of Earth can he see the Dao through images and know transformation through forms. The four opening characters are no ornament; they lift a person out of narrow calculation, so that he may first possess the measure of Heaven and Earth.

II. The "Establishing" of Qian and Kun Is the Fixing of a Relation, Not the Cessation of Change

The "establishing" (ding) in "thus Qian and Kun are established" is easily mistaken for stillness. Yet the very next lines speak of movement and stillness, the firm and the yielding, gathering and dividing, fortune and misfortune, image and shape, change -- and go on to speak of rubbing together, stirring one another, thunder and lightning, wind and rain, sun and moon, cold and heat. Nowhere in the whole chapter is there any sense of stagnation. Here, "established" means that names and roles can be set up, that the two poles can be distinguished, that change has something from which to proceed. For instance, only once east and west are fixed can a traveler go and return; only once above and below are made clear can rising and descending be spoken of; only once spring and autumn have their order do growth and decay not fall into confusion. Without a fundamental orientation, change is mere turbulent confusion; with a fundamental orientation, the ten thousand transformations appear as an orderly flow.

The fixing of Qian and Kun also keeps the changes of the hexagrams and lines from becoming arbitrary reversals. Qian is vigor; Kun is compliance. Vigor is not mere headlong forcing forward; compliance is not mere bending and submission. Vigor is vigor precisely because it is unceasing yet in accord with the times; compliance is compliance precisely because it receives and thereby brings things to completion. When Qian's motion reaches the point where it ought to stop, it too must know how to stop; when Kun's compliance reaches the juncture where it ought to issue forth, it too can generate. To understand Qian and Kun as two frozen temperaments is to lose sight of what the Yi values most: timeliness (shi). The virtue of Qian, across the different situations of its hexagram and line positions, is at times hidden, at times manifest, at times wary, at times leaping, at times soaring, at times overreaching -- one and the same vigorous Way takes different forms according to time and position. The virtue of Kun likewise has the warning of treading on frost, the constancy of the straight and the square, the beauty of holding brilliance within, the caution of the tied sack, and the moderation of the yellow lower garment. To fix the Way is not to fix its every track; precisely because the Way has what is fixed within it, its tracks can follow the moment without losing their correctness.

The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong) says, "The Way of Heaven and Earth may be told in a single sentence: it is a thing without duality, and so its generating of things is unfathomable." What is called "without duality" is sincerity and oneness, is not self-deceiving, is each thing fully realizing its own Way; what is called "unfathomable" is generation and transformation without end, not to be exhausted by any finite preconception. Fixity and change are not in conflict here. The virtue of Qian and Kun has its constancy, and so the four seasons can go and return; the four seasons go and return without cease, and so the myriad things can each fulfill their own life. If the seasons of Heaven had no constancy at all, farming would have no basis on which to flourish; if the nature of Earth received nothing at all, planting would have no basis on which to succeed. Precisely because there is a constancy one can rely upon, a person can make judgments within change.

The Guanzi repeatedly stresses the timeliness of Heaven, the advantages of terrain, and harmony among people; governing a state, waging war, filling the granaries, and tending fields and mulberry trees can none of them depart from time and place. What is made manifest here is likewise the real meaning of "fixity." The seasons of Heaven are not commanded into being by human beings, nor is the lay of the land altered by mere words. One skilled at governance must discern whether the year is abundant or lean, examine what the soil is suited for, and know what the people's strength can bear and what would exhaust it. So-called purposeful action is not acting however one pleases, but acting in accordance with what is fixed, so as to bring to completion what can be completed. Water flows downward, fire blazes upward, grasses and trees flourish and wither with the seasons, the people pursue benefit and avoid harm -- these constant tendencies do not shackle wisdom; they are precisely the ground on which wisdom exerts its effort. To depart from the nature and tendency of things and force one's will through by wishing alone is to go against what is fixed.

The Sunzi says that troops have no constant configuration, water has no constant shape; and it illustrates the marvel of change by how water follows the terrain to shape its flow, and troops follow the enemy to shape their victory. Yet having no constant shape does not mean having nothing fixed at all. That water flows downward, avoiding the high and following the low, is its constancy; that it bends or straightens, slows or quickens according to the terrain, is its change. That troops take victory as their measure, taking the enemy's situation and the lay of the land as their basis, is their constancy; that the deployment of formations, advance and retreat, cannot be nailed down in advance, is their change. From this one can see that what pre-Qin thought calls the study of change is by no means a praise of capriciousness, but a search for what is fitting between constancy and change. The fixing of Qian and Kun is precisely what establishes the root for change; the manifesting of change is precisely the Way of Qian and Kun brought into function among the myriad things.

Human virtuous conduct is likewise so. If trustworthiness (xin) had no constancy, it would not be trustworthiness at all; if righteousness (yi) shifted with private desire, it would not be righteousness at all. And yet keeping one's word cannot but examine the matter one has given one's word to, and carrying out righteousness cannot but weigh the time in which one is placed. Master Meng (Mencius) said of the great man that "his words need not always be kept, his deeds need not always be carried through -- only righteousness is where he stands," not casting aside trustworthiness and follow-through lightly, but refusing to place outward trace above righteousness. Righteousness is what is fixed; weighing (quan) is what changes. Without righteousness, weighing degenerates into mere cleverness; without knowing how to weigh, keeping righteousness may itself turn into rigid clinging. What the fixing of Qian and Kun teaches a person is precisely this: first establish what is great, and only then make one's way through its changes.

III. "The Low and the High Are Set Out": The World Reveals Its Order Through Position

Once Heaven and Earth are seen, the low and the high are set out. The single word "set out" (chen) makes space no longer an empty void, but a field within which positions unfold. Mountains and hills are high; rivers and marshes are low; ancestral temples have their arrangement of places; courts have their order. Within a single household there are father and son, elder and younger brother; within a single state there are ruler and minister, high and low. Pre-Qin ritual propriety (li) and righteousness so often begin from position not because the ancients knew only how to subjugate, but because a shared life must answer the question of who stands where, what each ought to do, and how each should treat the other. Without position, responsibility has nowhere to attach; if position falls into disorder, name and actuality drift apart from one another, and governance, human feeling, sacrifice, and warfare all lose their order.

Yet "the low and the high are set out; thus the noble and the humble take their places" must not be crudely reduced to the strong being noble and the weak being humble. Heaven is exalted and bestows; Earth is lowly and completes. If one looks only at the titles and not at the function, one will entirely miss the meaning of Qian and Kun completing one another. Earth occupies the lowly position, and yet it bears mountains and ranges, holds rivers and seas, generates the hundred grains, and nourishes all living creatures. Its "lowliness" is precisely its virtue of vastness and depth. The Most High said, "The reason the rivers and seas can be king of the hundred valleys is that they are good at lying below them," and also, "The highest good is like water; water benefits the ten thousand things without contending, and dwells in places that people disdain." Being good at lying below is not self-abasement, but the capacity to receive; because it can receive, it can become great; because it can hold, it can bring things to completion. Seen in this light, position has its high and low, but the depth of virtue cannot be judged by the surface appearance of position.

What ritual propriety (li) seeks to accomplish is likewise not to let those who occupy high position act willfully while those below stay silent. Those who occupy high position must be all the more reverent and cautious, for every word and act of theirs reaches many; those below also have a portion that cannot be taken from them, for the rectification of names must define both the upper and lower sides at once. "Let the ruler be a ruler, the minister a minister, the father a father, the son a son" -- each name carries responsibility within it, and is not merely a warrant for demanding obedience. When the Master discussed governance, he first required that the ruler fully carry out the Way of the ruler and the minister fully carry out the Way of the minister. If one occupies the ruler's position without benevolence, one has the name but not the substance; if one is a father without kindness, one likewise cannot demand a son's conduct on the strength of the father's position alone. Position makes responsibility visible; virtuous conduct makes position stand.

Master Meng discussed how the people are of the highest worth, the altars of soil and grain next, and the ruler the lightest, and also said that one who wins the hearts of the multitude of farmers becomes Son of Heaven. This does not abolish position, but asks on what ground the highest position stands at all. The position of ruling all under Heaven cannot be gained by force alone; it must be in communication with the people's hearts and with the Mandate of Heaven. One who loses the people's hearts loses all under Heaven; one who is cruel to his people, though he occupies a high position, has already ruined the very root by which that high position stood. In pre-Qin political thought, the Mandate of Heaven was never a warrant fixed once and for all, never to be altered; the Book of Documents repeats again and again that "August Heaven has no favorites -- it assists only virtue," precisely testing position against virtue and achievement. Once noble and humble have their places, the question immediately arises whether name-position and virtue-position truly correspond.

Master Xun (Xunzi) laid particular stress on distinction (fen). If people form groups without distinction, they contend; contention brings disorder; disorder brings separation; separation brings weakness. Human beings are capable of forming groups, and groups are capable of accomplishing things, but communal life must have distinction; distinction does not sever the multitude from one another, but allows different talents, labors, and responsibilities to coordinate with one another. The farmer tends the fields, the artisan fashions implements, the scholar discourses on the Way, the one who governs orders the multitude -- each has his own office, and all are threaded through by righteousness. If everyone contends for the same position and seeks the same benefit, with no one bearing the corresponding labor, the community cannot endure. Hence "position" has the function of ending contention, and also the merit of uniting the group.

Yet if distinction departs from righteousness, it turns into partiality; if position departs from virtue, it turns into usurpation and excess. The setting-out of the low and the high comes from the great order of Heaven and Earth; positions among human beings must model themselves on how Heaven and Earth nourish one another, and cannot model themselves merely on the outward form of above and below. Heaven occupies the high place, yet does not grow arrogant over its height; Earth occupies the low place, yet does not abandon itself because of its lowliness. Heaven bestows and Earth generates, each fully carrying out its own Way, so that the ten thousand things each find their proper place. If, among human beings, those above know only how to take tribute while those below cannot fulfill their own lives, this does not accord with Qian and Kun. True nobility lies in being able to bear heavy responsibility, to bestow benefit, and to bring the multitude to completion; true position lies in name and actuality corresponding to one another, in those above and those below nourishing one another. Reading "the noble and the humble take their places" in this way, one sees both the order and the virtuous conditions on which that order depends.

IV. Name and Position Are No Cage -- Timeliness-in-Position Is Where the Yi Truly Lives

When the Yi discusses position, it never speaks only of a fixed status, but also of the place one occupies within a particular moment and a particular affair. One and the same person, entering the ancestral temple, has the reverence proper to the temple; commanding troops, has the resolve proper to the battlefield; in mourning, has the grief proper to mourning; at ease at home, has the harmony proper to leisure. As the position one occupies changes, so does the conduct proper to it. A hexagram has six positions, and the lines dwell among them; whether a line attains the center, attains correctness, corresponds to another, or stands adjacent to another must all be viewed together with the situation of the whole hexagram. One can see that position is not an isolated cell, but a node woven through with relations. The fortune or misfortune of a given line is determined not only by whether it is firm or yielding in itself, but by when it occurs, what position it occupies, which line it corresponds to, and what configuration precedes and follows it.

This matters immensely for understanding human affairs. People often think that because their own intention is good, their action must therefore be good; that because they themselves have talent and ability, they can be put to use anywhere. Yet the Yi constantly reminds us: good intention out of season may become mere disturbance; talent and ability out of keeping with position may become overreach. In the time of the hidden dragon, virtue is not lacking, yet it must not hastily show itself; in the time of the overreaching dragon, strength is not weak, yet it must not press further forward. It is not that virtue or talent itself is at fault, but that time and position have changed the meaning of the action. One who knows position does not belittle himself; one who knows timing does not rush ahead rashly. When it is time to lie hidden, one nurtures one's virtue; when it is time to show oneself, one draws close to the people; when it is time for wariness, one examines one's faults; when it is time to leap, one discerns the moment. Change does not urge a person to seek novelty day after day, but demands that a person keep a clear mind toward his situation.

The Most High said, "He who does not lose his place endures long," and this "place" (suo) may be read together with position. That the myriad things each attain their proper place does not mean they are cut off from one another, but that each preserves its own nature within the whole. Fish cannot be forced to dwell on land, birds cannot be forced to submerge in the deep; crooked wood may become a wheel, straight wood may become a beam, each according to its material. If governance uses one single measure to level the myriad things, it appears orderly on the surface but in fact harms life. Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi), in his writings, often uses the transformation of large and small, long and short, useful and useless, to break the habit by which people judge the myriad things from one single, partial point of view. So-called "attaining one's position" need not always mean rising high; at times, withdrawing, keeping to the yielding, staying behind, and concealing one's use are precisely the position that preserves the springs of life.

The position most valued in the Confucian tradition places still greater emphasis on how a person forms virtue within relations. The position of father and son allows the love of kin to be realized in fact; the position of ruler and minister allows righteousness to be carried out; the position of elder and younger allows order to unfold; the association of friends allows trustworthiness to be brought to completion with one another. None of these are virtues one could possess in a vacuum, alone. Without another person, there is no way to display forbearance; without a trust bestowed, there is no way to test trustworthiness; without a conflict of interest, there is no way to make righteousness manifest. Position is at once a limit and the condition under which virtuous conduct can occur. A person does not first become a complete worthy outside of relations and only afterward happen to enter into the company of others; rather, it is precisely in serving parents, serving elders, befriending others, presiding over the people, and facing difficulty that he gradually forms his own virtue.

Position thus has two sides: it gives a person somewhere to stop, and it also gives a person something to accomplish. To see only the stopping is to regard ritual propriety as mere restraint; to see only the accomplishing is to overlook the danger of overstepping one's place. What the Yi displays through the hexagrams and lines is precisely how stopping and accomplishing depend on one another. A door needs a pivot before it can open and close; a cart needs an axle before it can move; without any limit at all, motion in fact has no way to occur. When a person knows the position he presently occupies, he can gather his strength toward what he ought to do, and not be dragged about by boundless idle imaginings. Only once position is fixed does resolve become concentrated; only once resolve is concentrated does achievement come to completion. If the heart constantly wanders a thousand miles away while the matter at hand is left to no one, then no discourse, however lofty, can bring anything to completion.

V. "Movement and Stillness Have Their Constancy": Constancy Is Not Never Moving at All

Between Heaven and Earth, there is what moves and what rests. The sun and moon move; the mountains and hills rest. Wind and thunder are in motion; rivers and marshes accumulate in stillness. Grasses and trees sprout in spring, grow tall in summer, gather in in autumn, and store away in winter. Movement and stillness do not simply divide the myriad things into two classes, for one and the same thing may itself have both movement and stillness. Water flowing is movement; a deep pool gathering still is stillness. A person on campaign, laboring, is movement; a person asleep at night is stillness. Speech is movement; silent understanding is stillness. What is called "having constancy" does not decree that a given thing must forever only move or only rest, but says that movement and stillness each have their season and each have their measure -- when it is time to move, one moves; when it is time to rest, one rests.

The vigor of Qian is most easily misread as ceaseless forward advance. But true unceasingness in fact does not exclude quiet nurturing. A bow long drawn goes slack; a people long labored grows weary; land long ploughed without rest is exhausted of its strength. Stillness is not the abandoning of the springs of life, but the nurturing of the springs of life. Winter's storing appears silent, yet it is precisely what makes spring's sprouting possible; when the noble person (junzi) withdraws to cultivate his virtue, this is not an eternal severing from the world, but a way of giving what will later come forth a foundation to stand upon. Conversely, the compliance of Kun does not amount to mere quiescence either. The earth appears calm, and yet the hundred things are born from within it; a mother receives and nurtures to completion, and her achievement, though never loud, is the most substantial of all. If movement and stillness are judged only by outward appearance, one will mistake restless agitation for firm vigor, and mistake mere silence for non-action.

The Most High said, "Attain the utmost of emptiness, hold fast to stillness in earnest; the myriad things arise together, and by this I observe their return." Holding fast to stillness matters not because one despises the arising of the myriad things together, but because only by not being swept away by the tumult can one see the return of the myriad things. He also said, "Weight is the root of lightness; stillness is the sovereign of restlessness" -- valuing weight and stillness does not abolish lightness and motion, but establishes the root for them. Without a heart settled in stillness, action is easily driven by joy and anger; without deep, submerged observation, judgment is easily deceived by momentary bluster. Master Guiguzi, discussing opening and closing, response, and probing, likewise places great weight on listening and discerning from within stillness. To know another's true feeling, one cannot merely speak on and on oneself; to discern the workings of a matter, one must let the other side reveal something of itself. Stillness is a gathering-in, a leaving of blank space, a way of letting the true state of affairs enter the heart.

The stillness of the Confucian tradition, meanwhile, is linked to reverence (jing). The Master praised Yan Hui (Master Yan) for "not transferring his anger, not repeating a fault," and within this lies the power of a heart able to come to rest and settle. If anger, once aroused, cannot be checked, it will drift from this person to that, from this matter to another. To be able not to transfer it is to have stillness within movement; to be able not to repeat a fault is to give rise to clarity within stillness. Master Zeng said, "Each day I examine myself on three points" -- and this examining, too, requires returning from the headlong rush of affairs, so that word and deed may present themselves anew within the heart. Without this return, a person is simply pushed along by events, and though busy the whole day through, may not know what he is in fact becoming.

"Movement and stillness have their constancy" can also be applied to governance. Decrees should not be issued in the morning and changed by evening; punishments and rewards should not shift in weight with a ruler's passing joy or anger -- this is the side of stillness. Yet when the year brings famine, when the enemy advances or withdraws, when the people's sentiment changes, one must not cling rigidly to old statutes -- this is the side of movement. Good governance does not consist in moving a great deal across the board, nor in moving as little as possible across the board, but in making the movement and stillness of governance accord with the rhythm of the people's livelihood. The Guanzi stresses that once a command is issued it must be carried out, and also stresses acting according to custom, according to the season, according to the place; that a command, once trusted, establishes constancy, while acting according to the moment lets change flow through. Constancy gives people something to trust; change gives affairs something to be carried through by.

The great failing of human beings is often neither pure movement nor pure stillness, but movement and stillness losing their proper timing. To hesitate when a decision ought to be made is stillness exceeding its proper measure; to press rashly forward when caution is called for is movement losing its constancy. To hear the good and be unable to move toward it, to see righteousness and be unable to shift toward it, is stagnation; to change one's constancy at the sight of small profit, to change one's resolve at the sound of idle talk, is restlessness. What the Yi asks of a person is to discern the incipient moment (ji), which lies precisely at the juncture where movement and stillness are about to divide. When a thought is about to arise but has not yet arisen, when a configuration is about to form but has not yet formed, it is in that single thread of a moment that clarity is most needed. One who discerns the incipient moment can stop before calamity has become visible, and let good grow while it is still just sprouting; one who does not discern it must wait until the configuration has already taken shape, and can only be swept along by the current.

VI. The Distinguishing of the Firm and the Yielding: Not a Contest of Strong and Weak, but a Discernment of Function

Once movement and stillness have their constancy, the firm and the yielding can be distinguished. The firm and the yielding are not good and evil predetermined by moral judgment, nor are they a crude classification that assigns firmness to men in general and yielding to women in general. The firm has the function of deciding, advancing, standing fast, and opening the way; the yielding has the function of receiving, cultivating, according with, and bringing to completion. The firm without the yielding snaps; the yielding without the firm collapses. A bow can loose an arrow because its material has both strength and resilience, and because the body of the bow can bend; a cart can move because its hub is sturdy, and because its turning is smooth and free. That the vessels of the world come to completion is so often precisely because the firm and the yielding assist one another.

To "distinguish" (duan) is to discern clearly. Faced with a matter, one must first discern whether its configuration leans toward the firm or toward the yielding, whether firmness or yielding is called for. If treachery runs rampant and one only keeps yielding, then yielding becomes cowardice; if the people's strength is exhausted and one only keeps pressing, then firmness becomes tyranny. To hold to righteousness without turning back is firmness; to remonstrate with a gentle countenance is yielding. To face great difficulty without losing one's resolve is firmness; to be able to accept the words of those who differ from oneself is yielding. Both can be present at once, in one person, in one matter. True firmness is not afraid to listen; true yielding does not abandon principle.

The Doctrine of the Mean says, "To be in harmony without being swept along -- how firm and unyielding! To stand in the center without leaning to either side -- how firm and unyielding!" To be in harmony without being swept along is precisely firmness within yielding: able to be in harmony with others, yet not losing one's hold by following the current; able to stand in the center, yet not changing one's resolve out of isolation. Master Meng, discussing the great man, said that wealth and rank cannot corrupt him, poverty and low station cannot move him, force and might cannot bend him -- displaying the firmness of virtuous character. And yet his saying that "one who subdues others through virtue makes their hearts rejoice and truly submit" refuses to press others through mere force. Firmness of virtue is not the same as harshness of method. The more genuine one's inner integrity, the less one needs to intimidate others with voice and countenance; the less genuine one's inner conviction, the more one tends to love hiding behind outward show of force.

The Most High, by contrast, often sees strength precisely in what is soft and weak. Water is utterly yielding, and yet it can overcome the hard; grasses and trees are soft and fragile while alive, withered and stiff when dead; a strong army does not always win, a strong tree is felled together with others. This does not teach a person to retreat forever, but reveals that when firmness and strength are carried to the extreme, they lose all room to turn and all springs of life. The yielding lets a thing bear change, go around obstruction, and preserve itself. If the Way of Qian and Kun retained only vigor and firmness, the myriad things would have no way to receive life; if it retained only compliance and yielding, the myriad things would have no way to begin. The Most High's valuing of the yielding does not contradict the Yi's meaning of the firm and the yielding rubbing against one another -- both oppose clinging to a single extreme.

When Master Xun discusses ritual propriety and righteousness, he often displays a vigorous, firm power of regulation. Human desires are boundless, while material goods are limited; if one follows desire without regulation, contention is inevitable. Ritual propriety and righteousness set the boundaries, so that communal life can be accomplished. This is distinguishing, this is establishing a boundary. And yet ritual propriety also has the side of nourishing desire and supplying its demands, and is not merely a prohibition that whittles a person down. Food and drink have their regulated forms, mourning and sacrifice have their forms of feeling, noble and humble have their gradations -- so that desire finds its nourishment without contending, and feeling finds its expression without running into disorder. This is precisely the joint use of the firm and the yielding: having boundaries, so that there is no disorder; having nourishing form, so that there is no withering.

Only when the firm and the yielding can be distinguished does fortune and misfortune have grounds for judgment. If firmness is used where yielding is called for, or yielding where firmness is called for, this runs against time and position; if firmness attains the mean and yielding attains correctness, one can accomplish things. Hence the firmness and yielding within the hexagrams and lines must always be set back into the relations of time and position. A firm line in a firm position is not necessarily always fortunate; a yielding line in a yielding position is not necessarily always fortunate either -- one must also see whether it attains the center, whether it accords with the moment, whether what it rides upon and what it carries are fitting. The subtlety of the Yi lies precisely in never absolutizing a single virtue. Every force must accord with the whole; every virtue must be realized within its actual situation.

VII. "Things Gather by Kind and Creatures Divide by Group": The Myriad Things Are Not One Formless Mass

Once Heaven and Earth have taken their places and movement and stillness, the firm and the yielding, can be distinguished, the myriad things show their tendencies and their groupings. "Things gather by kind and creatures divide by group" speaks of how like follows like, of how those close in nature, aspiration, or circumstance draw one another together. Birds and beasts have their flocks, grasses and trees have their families, water and soil each have what suits them; human beings likewise draw close to one another when their Way is the same, bond together when their interests are the same, and seek one another out by resonance of voice and disposition. Gathering and dividing happen at once: wherever one side gathers together, it divides from another. Without discernment, groups and kinds cannot be seen; without gathering together, things cannot form any force at all.

The Yi's observation of gathering and dividing does not encourage a person to cling stubbornly to factional bias. Classification is first of all a kind of ordering of knowledge. The farmer distinguishes the five grains, the physician distinguishes cold and heat, the artisan distinguishes the properties of materials, the herdsman distinguishes his flocks and herds -- only thus can each put things to their proper use. To force what is different into sameness harms things; to deliberately sever what is alike also loses their combined force. Planting according to the soil, fashioning implements according to the material, raising animals according to their nature -- all of this rests upon the discernment of kind. The Guanzi, in discussing the properties of land, distinguishes soil color, springs and streams, grasses and trees, and what each is suited for, showing precisely that managing livelihood cannot be imagined out of thin air. Land has its gradations, things have what suits and what does not suit them; only by knowing their kind can one accomplish one's work.

The gathering of human groups requires still more careful discernment. The Master said, "Virtue is never alone; it is sure to have neighbors" -- virtue calls forth virtue. He also said, "The noble person unites broadly but does not form cliques; the small man forms cliques but does not unite broadly," pointing out that gathering has its public and its private forms. To unite broadly is to draw close to one another widely through the Way and righteousness; to form cliques is to bind together through private interest. Both look outwardly like "grouping," yet inwardly they are entirely different. Those who gather through righteousness can correct and complete one another; those who gather through interest scatter once the interest is exhausted, and may even turn on and plunder one another. Hence, on seeing a gathering, one must still ask why they have gathered; on seeing sameness, one must still ask what Way they are the same in.

The Book of Songs uses the calling of a bird seeking its friend's voice to liken how like resonates with like: "Ying it calls, seeking the voice of its friend." Friends seeking one another out is not mere pastime, but an important condition for virtue and achievement. To study alone without friends easily narrows what one hears and sees; to dwell among those who surpass oneself lets one hear one's faults and move toward the good; to dwell among flatterers lets private desire grow day by day without one's own awareness. Master Zeng held that a friend assists benevolence, and Zixia likewise valued friends who examine and encourage one another earnestly. A person, within a group, is quietly transformed by language, habit, and likes and dislikes; hence choosing one's friends is choosing the shape one is about to become.

Master Xun said, "Mugwort growing amid hemp stands straight without support; white sand mixed into black mud turns black along with it" -- stating with full clarity the effect of the group and its environment upon a person. A person is not fixed once and for all at birth; custom, accumulating gradually, can change one's resolve and conduct. Dwelling in Chu one becomes like Chu, dwelling in Yue one becomes like Yue -- this is what daily contact through ear, eye, mouth, and body brings about. Hence moral instruction cannot rely only on occasional admonition, but must build a shared life in which ritual propriety and righteousness are visible and good conduct is something one can draw close to. The group of teachers and friends, the customs of one's neighborhood, the values esteemed at court -- all of these encourage a certain kind of conduct and restrain another kind.

And yet a person also has the possibility of exceeding the group and kind he already belongs to. If it were simply "like follows like," the small man would forever be able only to gather with small men, and good and evil could never be transformed. The very reason the Yi speaks of change is precisely that a person can see what he has gathered with and still choose for himself. The group one finds oneself in is a configuration (shi), not a fate; however deep the influence of habit, turning back to examine oneself can still redirect one's course. Master Meng held that every person has the possibility of becoming an ancient sage; Master Xun likewise held that an ordinary person could, through learning and practice, accomplish the achievement of an ancient sage. Though the two differ in their theories of human nature, both acknowledge that learning and practice can let a person form his own virtue. The dividing into groups reveals influence; it does not abolish the subject's careful choice.

Political factions, too, can be discerned by this. Worthy people advancing together in the same Way may be slandered as a faction; private cliques bound by mutual support may likewise call themselves united in virtue. The distinction lies not in numbers, but in whether what they do serves all under Heaven or serves only themselves. If they together advance the worthy, remove what harms, and give the people peace, then even sharing the same resolve, this is not private clique-forming; if they exclude dissent, shelter one another in turn, and harm the public good for private gain, then even while professing the Way and righteousness with their mouths, this is gathering by kind toward evil. Fortune and misfortune arise precisely from this: when what gathers together is upright, it completes itself and brings fortune; when what gathers together is depraved, it obscures itself and brings misfortune.

VIII. Fortune and Misfortune Are Not Rewards and Punishments Sent Down from Beyond Heaven

"Things gather by kind and creatures divide by group; thus fortune and misfortune arise." The character "arise" (sheng) shows that fortune and misfortune are generated out of relation and action. Heaven and Earth take their places, the low and the high are set out, movement and stillness have their constancy, the firm and the yielding can be distinguished, groups and kinds gather and divide -- and a person, taking and forsaking, advancing and withdrawing within all this, thereby comes to have gain and loss, regret and remorse. Fortune and misfortune do not fall from beyond Heaven for no reason at all, nor are they manufactured out of nothing by a single oracle statement. Divination can reveal fortune and misfortune, but it does not produce fortune and misfortune in a person's stead. Their root still lies in the time one is in, the position one occupies, the kind one is drawn to, and the Way one follows.

The Book of Documents says, "To follow the right path is fortune, to follow the deviant path is misfortune -- as sure as shadow and echo." To act in accord with the Way brings fortune the way a shadow follows a form; to act against principle brings misfortune the way an echo answers a sound. This does not mean the good person always profits at once and the wicked person is always punished on the spot. What the pre-Qin classics call fortune and misfortune sometimes refers to whether a matter can be accomplished, sometimes to whether virtue and position can be secured, sometimes to whether one's ancestral state can endure, and sometimes to whether, even amid outward calamity, one is inwardly without shame. If one measures only by immediate material gain, then plundering great profit could be called fortune, and holding to righteousness while suffering hardship would become misfortune -- and this is plainly not the measure of the Yi.

Fortune, first of all, is according and attaining: acting in accord with the time, the firm and the yielding finding their proper fit, above and below corresponding to one another, so that wherever one goes bears fruit. Misfortune is going against and losing: not gauging the time and configuration, losing the mean and correctness, relations falling into discord, advance and retreat having no ground to stand on. Regret is perceiving one's loss and correcting it; remorse is having some difficulty not yet resolved. Hence when the Yi sets out fortune and misfortune, it is not to make a person shrink back and stay still, but to teach a person to discern where each comes from. To know where misfortune arises lets one correct it before it has taken shape; to know how fortune is formed keeps one from mistaking a chance stroke of luck for an eternal warrant.

Master Meng, discussing calamity and blessing, traces the root again and again back to oneself and to one's governance. Practicing benevolent government makes the people draw close; oppressing the people makes them rebel. Whoever holds to the Way has many helpers; whoever loses the Way has few. Many or few helpers is no mysterious retribution, but the unfolding, within human affairs, of gathering by kind and dividing by group. The benevolent person extends himself to others, and the people are willing to stand with him; the tyrant treats the multitude as a pit to fill, and even his own kin may leave him. Those who help gather together and a configuration of strength forms; those who leave divide apart and a configuration of defeat forms -- and fortune and misfortune arise from just this.

The Most High said, "Calamity is what blessing leans upon; blessing is where calamity lies hidden," reminding a person not to nail down fortune and misfortune already seen as though fixed forever. Within fortune, misfortune may already lie hidden: attaining one's ambition and growing arrogant, gaining wealth and rank and growing dissolute, defeating an enemy and growing fond of war -- all of these can turn fortune into misfortune. Within misfortune, fortune may also be growing: knowing danger and being on guard, meeting hardship and turning to self-examination, suffering a setback and casting off extravagance -- all of these can turn misfortune into fortune. Fortune and misfortune are judgments made within change, not a permanent verdict on a person. Precisely because they can change, the noble person, in fortune, does not forget to be on guard, and in misfortune, does not lose what he is still able to do.

What is precious in the Yi lies precisely in transforming fear into clear discernment. A person who has never examined himself, meeting misfortune, easily turns to seeking out the uncanny; attaining fortune, easily attributes it to mere luck. One who understands how fortune and misfortune arise instead turns to examine himself: has he lost his position, has he been excessive in firmness, has he been excessive in yielding, what kind has he drawn close to, has his conduct accorded with the time. In this way, divination is no excuse for evading responsibility, but becomes a mirror for setting one's action in order. The Way of Heaven is worthy of reverence, but revering Heaven is by no means pushing every fault of one's own onto Heaven; and knowing one's fate (ming) is by no means folding one's hands and waiting. Reverence lies in not acting rashly; knowing lies in discerning principle; action lies in cultivating virtue.

IX. "In Heaven Images Are Formed, on Earth Shapes Are Formed": The Twofold World of Image and Form

What Heaven presents is mostly image: the rising and setting of sun and moon, the successive lodgings of the stars, the gathering and scattering of clouds and vapors, thunder and lightning, wind and rain. What Earth brings to completion is mostly shape: mountains, rivers, hills, and valleys; grasses, trees, birds, and beasts; implements and walled cities. Image can be gazed upon and its portent seen; shape can be trodden and its substance examined. Image inclines toward manifestation and guidance; shape inclines toward realization and accomplishment. The two are not two separate, sealed-off worlds. Heaven's images affect what grows upon the earth; Earth's shapes receive and bear the changes of Heaven's seasons. A person knows the time from Heaven's images, settles what is fitting from Earth's shapes, and labors and lives at the meeting-point of image and shape.

"Image" is no empty phantom. The sun rising in the east is an image, and it truly regulates the rhythm of rest and labor; the direction the Dipper's handle points is an image, and it corresponds to the turning of the year; clouds gathering and wind rising are an image, and may well foretell rain to come. What is distinctive about image is not that it lacks reality, but that it uses what is visible to signal an order not yet fully unfolded. Seeing leaves fall and knowing the year is drawing late, seeing ice first form and being on guard against severe cold, seeing the people voice grievance and knowing that governance has failed -- all of these are discerning a configuration through image. Shape, by contrast, is the result already congealed out of change: grain having formed its kernel, an implement having taken its finished form, a city wall already built, a punishment already carried out -- all of these have entered a state that can be touched and put to use.

The Book of Songs excels at observing image. The kite flying up to Heaven, the fish leaping in the deep, are not only about bird and fish, but make manifest the principle by which above and below flow into one another; the peach tree so tender and young is not only about blossom and tree, but is bound up with the flourishing of marriage and household; "wind and rain, dark as night, the cock's crowing never ceasing" makes tangible and felt the resolve to hold to constancy amid a disordered age. Though the comparison and evocation (bixing) of the Book of Songs and the image (xiang) of the Yi each have their own substance and function, neither suspends principle as empty words. The Way must manifest itself through what can be seen and felt, and the human heart, too, is moved by concrete images of things.

That the Master taught people to know widely the names of birds, beasts, grasses, and trees was not confining learning to the names of things, but was because if a person is utterly ignorant of the myriad things around him, the so-called Way of Heaven and Earth becomes mere empty talk. Birds, beasts, grasses, and trees are each born in their season and each have their own nature; to know them is to know the differences among the shapes formed upon the earth, and also to learn not to flatten the myriad things with one's own opinion. Ritual vessels, the colors of ceremonial dress, palace halls, chariots and banners are likewise shapes; they realize, in a form that can be enacted, the invisible closeness and distance, the honor and humility, the grief, reverence, and sincerity that would otherwise remain unseen. Without shape, intention has difficulty being conveyed and sustained; yet shape without sincerity becomes mere empty ornament once more.

The Most High said, "The great image has no shape" -- not denying image and shape, but saying that the greatest Way cannot be exhausted by any single fixed vessel or shape. The Way flows through the myriad things, and each thing manifests but one facet of it; no single thing can possess the whole. When the Yi sets up the hexagrams and observes their images, it likewise does not mean that the eight trigrams are the complete appearance of Heaven and Earth, but uses finite images to reach toward boundless change. To treat image as a dead, fixed symbol is to lose true observation; to abandon image altogether in seeking the Way is to have nowhere to stand. That the sages looked up and examined down was precisely a way of grasping the principle that runs through all things within concrete manifestation.

Image and shape also correspond to the before and after of human affairs. When intention first stirs, it is often seen first in one's countenance and manner of speech -- this is image; once decrees and institutions are established, merit, fault, benefit, and harm become concretely manifest -- this is shape. One skilled at observation knows the direction a thing is heading as soon as the image first appears, and need not wait, startled, until the bad result has already taken shape. Master Guiguzi placed great weight on speech, expression and voice, and response, using these to discern a person's hidden state -- this is precisely moving from image into substance. But observing image must not fall into mere suspicion; it must be corroborated by long-term conduct and actual results. A single expression, a single remark, is only a faint image; to judge arbitrarily on this basis is instead to be deceived by the image. Image must be traced through to shape, and shape must be traced back to its image; only when the two corroborate one another does judgment avoid bias.

X. Why Change Is Made Manifest Between Image and Shape

"In Heaven images are formed, on Earth shapes are formed; thus change is made visible." Change is "made visible" precisely because there is difference between before and after, correspondence between one thing and another. The moon waxes and wanes; the sun rises and sets; cold and heat come and go; grasses and trees flourish and wither; mountains and marshes exchange their vapors; thunder and wind press against one another. If Heaven and Earth showed nothing at all, change could not be known; if the myriad things never took shape at all, change would have no way to be verified either. Image lets a person see what is coming; shape lets a person see what has been accomplished. From image to shape, and from shape giving rise to new image once more -- the transformation of Heaven and Earth unfolds before human eyes.

Change is not the arbitrary substitution of one thing for another, but the shifting of a thing within its relations. A seed enters the soil and, given rain, dew, and warmth, sprouts; the young shoot grows, and in time bears fruit. Every step has its prior cause and what it waits upon, and gives rise in turn to a new form. A person, within all this, cannot claim to create the myriad things, but can only assist their transformation and growth. Sowing, weeding, and irrigating can help bring things to completion, but cannot command a seed to ripen before its season; governance and moral instruction can guide the people, but cannot disregard hunger and cold and seek order through empty words alone. One who understands change knows both how to exert effort and how to wait.

The Zhuangzi speaks at length of the transformation of things (wu hua) -- dream and waking, life and death, this and that, right and wrong all flowing and shifting into one another -- with the intent of breaking a person's habit of taking one momentary view as eternal. Yet the transformation of things does not mean denying all difference whatsoever. Precisely because there is a distinction between this and that can there be a transformation of this into that; precisely because shape has been formed can shape be transformed. What Master Zhuang warns against is a person taking a temporarily formed standpoint as the whole of the Way, and thereby falling into endless argument that harms life and injures nature. The Yi likewise does not let a person cling to any single hexagram or line as a permanent situation. Peace (Tai) can turn into Obstruction (Pi); even after Already Fulfilled (Jiji), there remains Not Yet Fulfilled (Weiji); flourishing and decline depend on one another, order and disorder lie hidden within each other.

The Confucian discussion of change places still greater weight on how a person, amid change, holds to correctness and forms virtue. The Master said, "That which passes is like this, is it not -- never ceasing day or night," and the ceaseless flowing water makes a person feel time itself in motion; yet this sigh is no despondency, but an urging to advance in virtue while there is still time. Not a single moment of the years ever pauses; if a person does not learn, ingrained habit too accumulates day by day; if a person can renew himself daily, virtue and achievement likewise accumulate day by day. Change itself does not guarantee movement toward the good; it only shows that one cannot remain forever in the same place. Which direction one changes toward depends on the kind one draws close to, the habits one returns to, and the resolve one establishes.

Master Meng said, "The spring at its source gushes on, never ceasing day or night; it fills every hollow before advancing further, and reaches at last the four seas" -- using water that has a source to illustrate the advance of virtue. Water flows without ceasing, and yet it must fill every pit and hollow before continuing forward; it does not overleap, does not vault emptily ahead. Here constancy and change are present at once: that the source never runs dry is constancy; that it advances according to the terrain is change; heading toward the sea is its direction; filling each hollow before advancing is its sequence. Learning that seeks only novelty and is unwilling to fill in the work at hand is water without a source; integrity that clings only to old traces and does not know how to accord with the changes of the time likewise cannot reach the four seas.

Political change likewise must have its source. Institutions may be adjusted, added to or reduced, according to the time, but such adjustment is not to be done arbitrarily. The Master, discussing how the Zhou followed the ritual of the Shang and the Shang followed the ritual of the Xia, and how what was added and reduced can be known, shows that ritual institutions both carry on a continuity and undergo adaptation. Continuity keeps the great root of human relations from falling away; adaptation keeps the regulated forms fitting for the present age. If one discards everything old wholesale, the people lose what they depend on; if one changes not a single word, ritual may become detached from actual circumstance. Change is made visible in image and shape; wisdom is formed through continuity and reform.

XI. The Two Characters "Therefore" (Shigu): Turning from the Order of Heaven and Earth to the Function of Ceaseless Generation

The first paragraph moves from Heaven and Earth to change; the second paragraph picks up with "therefore" (shigu): "Therefore the firm and the yielding rub against one another, and the eight trigrams stir one another into motion." These two characters show that what follows -- thunder and lightning, wind and rain, sun and moon, cold and heat, the forming of male and female, the ease and simplicity of Qian and Kun -- is not a fresh start from scratch, but the further unfolding of what came before: Heaven and Earth taking their places, image and shape forming into transformation. Precisely because there are above and below, movement and stillness, the firm and the yielding, gathering and dividing, does change have the conditions for its occurrence; and precisely because these differences are not sealed off from one another do they rub and stir against one another, transforming and generating the myriad things.

If difference were only separation, Heaven and Earth would become two severed halves, the firm and the yielding would each guard their own corner, and the myriad things could not communicate with one another. The difference the Yi perceives always lies within relation. Heaven is high and Earth is low, and yet their qi transforms and communicates between them; mountains are high and marshes are low, and yet they can exchange their vapors; thunder moves and wind travels, stirring and drumming each other on; water and fire are opposite in nature, and yet together they perform their function. Distinction, then, is not the endpoint. Distinction exists so that one may know who meets whom, how they resonate with one another, and what happens once they do. Without the ability to distinguish, all is confusion; knowing only how to distinguish without knowing how to connect, all is severed. The Way of the Yi values distinction, and equally values connection.

Though the various pre-Qin schools spoke by different paths, most faced the same question: given that the world is full of differences, how can they complete one another$2 The Confucian tradition uses ritual propriety to distinguish and music to harmonize. Ritual propriety gives closeness and distance, nobility and humility, each its own regulated form; music lets the feelings of those above and those below resonate and communicate with one another. Ritual propriety alone, without music, easily grows rigid and dry; music alone, without ritual propriety, easily lets feeling run to excess. Master Xun's discussion of ritual and music is precisely a matter of achieving order between distinction and union. The Daoist tradition, through the reversing, the weak, and yin and yang embracing one another, shows that no single extreme can stand on its own. The Most High said, "Being and non-being generate each other, difficult and easy complete each other, long and short give each other form, high and low incline toward each other" -- any single extreme reveals its meaning only in relation to its counterpart.

"Therefore" also reminds the reader that the Yi does not arbitrarily fit experiential phenomena into the eight trigrams, but sees their images arising from the actual relations among the myriad things of Heaven and Earth. In establishing the eight trigrams, there is Heaven and Earth, thunder and wind, water and fire, mountain and marsh -- these are not empty names abstracted away from nature. A person lives day after day among them, seeing the vigorous motion of Heaven, the bearing and carrying of Earth, the shaking of thunder, the entering of wind into things, the moistening downward flow of water, the blazing brightness of fire, the stillness of the mountain, the joy of the marsh -- and thus uses finite images to encompass boundless circumstance. The images of the hexagrams can be applied to human affairs, because human affairs have never departed from the movement, stillness, opening, and closing of Heaven and Earth.

The following text, beginning with "rubbing against one another" and "stirring one another into motion," implies that generation is never a one-way command. Heaven bestows and Earth receives, and between bestowing and receiving there is a coming and going; the firm advances and the yielding accepts, and between advancing and accepting there is a call and response. Moral instruction is likewise so. The teacher instructs, the student receives; if the one who receives does not question and put it into practice, the words of the one who instructs cannot truly take shape. The ruler issues a command, the people carry it out; if the command does not take the people's sentiment into account, order cannot be achieved either. True completion of things always involves the participation of both sides. That "Qian knows the great beginning, Kun brings things to completion" will find its concrete foundation right here.

XII. "The Firm and the Yielding Rub Against One Another": Opposites Meet, and Change Is Born at the Boundary

"Rubbing" (mo) brings to mind two things touching and grinding against each other. If the firm and the yielding remain far apart, neither affects the other; once they touch, each changes its original state. Wood rubbing against stone can generate heat; bowstring rubbing can produce sound; only when the cartwheel rubs against the ground does the cart move forward. There is no need to confine "rubbing" to any single physical instance; what it points toward is this: different forces act upon one another in contact, and change so often arises precisely at the boundary.

Such mutual rubbing is even more common in human affairs. When two opinions meet, if they can question each other through righteousness, what was previously unseen comes to light; where two states share a border, there is trade and exchange, and also contention and defense; father and son, husband and wife, elder and younger brother, living together day and night with different temperaments, find that ritual propriety and righteousness become, through this friction, the order of daily life. A community with no friction at all is generally nothing but an idle fantasy. The key point lies not in eliminating all mutual rubbing, but in keeping mutual rubbing from turning into mutual destruction, so that difference can complete rather than consume itself.

Ritual propriety here functions like a boundary and a pattern of veins. It gives the firm something to be regulated by, and gives the yielding something to hold onto. The will of one who occupies the higher position cannot press down without limit; the desires and feelings of one who occupies the lower position cannot surge upward without limit either. A kind father and a filial son, a friendly elder brother and a respectful younger brother -- each takes the other as the condition for forming his own virtue. If only one side is required to perform, the relation snaps. Kindness without filial response is a bestowal with nothing answering it; filial devotion without kindness is compliance with nothing nourishing it. Righteousness in the ruler and loyalty in the minister are likewise so. If the mutual rubbing of those above and those below is guided by ritual propriety and righteousness, it can produce trust and order; if all that remains is coercion and resentment, disorder is born instead.

The Master said that the noble person is "harmonious yet not the same" -- this is precisely rubbing against one another without destroying one another. "Not the same" preserves each person's own view; "harmonious" allows those who differ to still work together. If harmony is understood as everyone speaking with one voice, there is no longer any need for mutual rubbing, and faults become hard to see. The way of friendship values loyal counsel and skillful guidance; straight speech may displease, and yet it grinds away one's blind spots. Conversely, to use "straightforwardness" as a pretext for constant insult and humiliation is firmness exceeding its proper measure; to use "harmony" as a pretext for mere yes-saying and compliance is yielding losing its hold.

The Mozi stresses "identifying upward" (shang tong), hoping that right and wrong throughout the world can be unified, so as to avoid everyone holding to their own righteousness and thereby harming one another. Its concern, rooted in the strife of a disordered age, has real grounds. Yet the meaning of mutual rubbing in the Yi also warns that sameness must not simply flatten difference. What a superior holds to be right is not necessarily always in accord with righteousness; if every level identifies upward without question, faults may only be magnified. Hence the Confucian tradition of the pre-Qin era, while valuing shared standards, also preserved the practice of remonstration and dispute. When the ruler errs, the minister ought to remonstrate; when the father errs, the son ought to remonstrate gently. If mutual rubbing is entirely abolished, what is called harmony and unity is in fact the loss of any chance to correct error.

What the Most High called "the myriad things carry yin on their backs and embrace yang, blending their qi to make harmony" is likewise not one side swallowing the other. "Carrying on the back" and "embracing" show both sides present at once, and harmony is born between them. Harmony does not first grind yin and yang into indistinguishability and then arrive at calm; rather, yin and yang each remain, flowing and assisting each other. The rubbing of the firm and the yielding is likewise so: the firm remains firm, the yielding remains yielding, and yet in their contact they adjust their strength, direction, and rhythm. True harmony has tension within it, just as a zither string produces no sound if too slack, and snaps if drawn too tight.

Personal cultivation likewise requires an inner rubbing of the firm and the yielding. Desire seeks speed; moral principle demands restraint. Feeling wants to burst forth; ritual propriety demands moderation. Ambition wants to reach far; reality demands a proper sequence. Cultivation does not utterly kill off one side, but arranges them fittingly within the heart. Master Meng said that nothing better nurtures the heart than having few desires -- he does not say to extinguish desire. Master Xun said that ritual propriety nourishes people's desires and supplies their demands -- he does not say to indulge desire either. "Having few" and "nourishing" each have their own emphasis, but both acknowledge that human desire must be weighed and regulated before it can complete itself together with communal life.

XIII. "The Eight Trigrams Stir One Another into Motion": Not Eight Objects, but Eight Great Functions Rousing One Another

After rubbing comes stirring (dang). "Stirring" shows even more flow and rousing than "rubbing." The Heaven, Earth, thunder, wind, water, fire, mountain, and marsh imaged by the eight trigrams are not eight specimens set out motionless, but enter into, push against, and complete one another within the running of Heaven and Earth. Thunder shakes because of cloud and vapor; wind travels according to the workings of qi; rain moistens the great earth; fire illumines water and marsh; the mountain sends forth clouds; the marsh receives the flowing streams. Take any single image on its own, and it can hardly complete the transformation of Heaven and Earth apart from all the other images.

A hexagram is composed of three lines, and the doubled hexagram brings an upper and a lower trigram together to meet. Once they meet, the meaning is not merely the sum of the two images, but a new situation is born. The same water, in the sky, may be cloud; in the earth, may be a spring; before a defile, may be difficulty; above fire, may show the image of Already Fulfilled or Not Yet Fulfilled. The same mountain, meeting water, marsh, thunder, or wind, presents different relations. Stirring brings the images to life: the meaning of an image is born from its position and its interaction, not a fixed, unchanging list of names.

This is also how the Yi regards the complexity of human affairs. A person's virtue and talent are never displayed in a vacuum. A firm and upright minister, meeting a ruler capable of accepting remonstration, can bring about order; meeting a jealous and severe ruler, may instead incur disaster. Benevolent, generous governance applied to a depleted and worn-down state should first give it rest and recovery; applied at a time when foreign trouble presses close, it must also be joined with defense. The same virtue, placed within different combinations, shows different effects. Judgment cannot ask only "what is this," but must also ask, "what does it meet$1"

The Sunzi says that the changes of the five tones cannot all be heard, the changes of the five colors cannot all be seen, the changes of the five flavors cannot all be tasted -- showing precisely that finite basic elements, through combination, can generate boundless change. The eight trigrams carry this same meaning. The images are finite; the transformations of affairs are boundless. That finite images can respond to boundless affairs lies not in pairing each event in advance with a fixed symbol, but in stirring, interweaving, going and coming, and changing. To lock each hexagram down as a single fortune-telling formula is precisely to abolish this stirring.

Music best displays this stirring. A single note cannot make music; the many tones, high and low, clear and murky, must correspond to one another, and the rhythm must have its proper order of quick and slow, before feeling can flow. Musical tones are not better the more there are; there must be a principal and a subordinate, a rising and falling, a stopping and starting. The stirring of the eight trigrams into motion is likewise not disorderly collision, but change proceeding upon the premise that Qian and Kun have already taken their places and the firm and the yielding can already be distinguished. Sound without order is mere noise; sound without change is mere monotony. The distinction of ritual propriety and the harmony of music can be used to grasp the taking of position and the mutual stirring of the hexagrams.

Stirring carries one further warning: every position lies within the influence of the whole. A small act may spread along the web of relations. If the ruler loves valor, his ministers may compete in cruelty to win merit; if the ruler loves wealth, his officials may plunder at every level; if a village honors the worthy, its young may take pride in learning and good conduct. What those above favor, those below will favor to an even greater degree. Gathering by kind draws like to like; stirring transmits influence onward. One who occupies a pivotal position all the more cannot treat a private preference as a trivial matter.

Conversely, good influence can likewise stir and spread. When one person keeps faith, others dare to entrust themselves to him; when one household values yielding, disputes in the neighborhood decrease; when the court employs the worthy, scholars know which direction to turn toward. Virtue is not some beautiful thing stored in isolation within the heart; it enters into relations through word and deed, and changes the choices of those around it. What the Master called "governing through virtue is like the North Star, which stays in its place while the multitude of stars pay court to it" shows precisely that once virtue and position are established, the group rearranges itself around them.

XIV. The Drumming of Thunder and Lightning: How the Motion of Heaven and Earth Awakens the Myriad Things

"Drummed by thunder and lightning, moistened by wind and rain." Drumming is spoken of first, moistening second. Thunder and lightning shake, and the myriad things start awake; wind and rain soak and steep, and the hundred grains grow. Drumming alone, and the springs of life may burst forth without any nourishment to sustain them; moistening alone, and the myriad things may likewise stagnate without ever stirring into motion. Drumming and moistening are themselves a pairing of the firm and the yielding: thunder and lightning show authority; wind and rain show kindness. Authority moves things; kindness lets them grow.

The image of spring thunder, in the agrarian life of the pre-Qin era, was no remote marvel. After winter's storing, yang qi issues forth, the sound of thunder stirs, and grasses, trees, and insects emerge each in their season. Heaven and Earth do not command the myriad things with words, but rouse them through the qi of the seasons. The Master said that Heaven does not speak, and yet the four seasons proceed and the hundred creatures are born -- thunder, lightning, wind, and rain are precisely this wordless teaching. They have none of the phrasing of a human edict, and yet their rhythm cannot be defied or missed. The farmer, hearing thunder, watching clouds, and observing the wind, adjusts his tillage accordingly. Reverence for Heaven is thus realized, in practice, as reverence for the season.

The "drumming" of governance may take the form of commands, the awe of punishment, or exhortation, rousing the multitude from their indolence. But thunder and lightning cannot shake the earth every single day, and governance too cannot rely on intimidation alone. If the people only fear authority and are given no rest, their strength is soon exhausted. Master Meng's repeated demand not to interfere with the farming seasons, to lighten taxation, and to let the people nurture life and see off death without regret is precisely a matching of moistening with governmental command. Only when the common people have a constant livelihood do they have a constant heart; only when the granaries have some accumulation does moral instruction through ritual propriety have a root to grow from. To drive the people by punishment alone is like driving an already weary horse -- it cannot last long.

The Guanzi says that when the granaries are full, people know ritual and restraint, and when food and clothing suffice, people know honor and shame -- this does not reduce moral transformation to mere material goods, but acknowledges that the formation of virtue requires basic sustenance and care. The moistening of wind and rain appears ordinary, and yet it is an indispensable condition for the growth of the myriad things. If one who governs loves only grand proclamations and is unwilling to attend to the fine details of water conservancy, granary storage, farming, and sericulture, there is thunder without rain; however loud the noise, the land remains parched. True achievement so often accumulates in silence, as rain seeps into the soil, seeking no momentary display.

Teaching others likewise requires both drumming and moistening applied together. When a student grows lax, the teacher must rouse and admonish him; when a student is confused, the teacher must nurture and sustain him. Reproach alone may make him fear learning; comfort alone may keep him from advancing. The Master taught according to each person's capacity: when Ran Qiu held back, the Master urged him forward; when Zilu was too eager, the Master held him back -- discerning each one's firmness or yielding and adjusting accordingly. Some people need a single clap of thunder; others need the slow moistening of wind and rain. And even the same person may need different things at different stages.

The thunder and lightning within self-cultivation is the shock of hearing of one's own fault; the wind and rain are the daily accumulation needed to correct it. When a person suddenly realizes he has erred, and his heart is shaken, this is only the beginning. Without the practice that follows, the shock soon fades away. To truly change one's disposition, one must let it seep in, drop by drop, through daily speech, food and drink, advance and retreat, choice and refusal -- as rain seeps into soil. Master Zeng, hearing of the one thread running through the Way, still realized it in practice through conscientiousness and empathetic reciprocity (zhong shu); Yan Hui, upon grasping a single good, held it fast to his breast. Sudden realization and gradual cultivation, the shock and the nurturing, must not be neglected in favor of one at the expense of the other.

Thunder and lightning also remind a person not to imagine the virtue of Heaven and Earth as unfailingly gentle and soft. In generating things, Heaven and Earth also have their severity and their culling; when the noble person is benevolent toward the people, he too must remove what harms them. If violence and disorder trespass upon the people, if treachery throws governance into chaos, and one does not act decisively, this is to let the yielding harm benevolence. But the purpose of decisive action ought to be the restoration of nurturing and growth, not an infatuation with sheer force. That thunder and lightning are followed by wind and rain, that the awe of punishment returns to nurturing instruction -- this sequence matters enormously. Authority exists, at root, to protect life; if authority itself becomes the goal, it has already reversed the virtue of Qian and Kun.

XV. The Moistening of Wind and Rain: True Completion of Things So Often Happens in Silence

Both wind and rain have the nature of pervading everywhere. Wind travels and the grass bends before it, entering every crevice; rain falls from Heaven and moistens the soil. Their power does not depend entirely on violence. Gentle breeze and fine rain do not strive to astonish, and yet they let roots and sprouts unfurl. From this one can see that Heaven and Earth do not always bring things to completion through spectacular means. So many of the most fundamental transformations occur precisely amid the unnoticed course of daily life.

Moral instruction is likewise so. Ritual and music, schools, family upbringing, and local custom, steeping a person day after day, form him over long duration. A single command can change behavior for a moment; only sustained custom can change what a person is ashamed of and what he esteems. The Master said, "The virtue of the noble person is like wind, the virtue of the small man is like grass; when the wind passes over the grass, the grass is sure to bend" -- the wind here is no violent overthrow, but those below following the example of those above. When those above are themselves frugal, extravagance among the people naturally eases somewhat; when those above contend for profit, no number of prohibitions can stop the people below from competing after it too.

The effect of the teaching carried by the wind is often underestimated precisely because it is invisible. People easily esteem visible, great achievements and overlook the tiny choices made every day. In truth, the customs of a state are never formed suddenly in a single day; a person's virtue, too, is never suddenly completed by a single word. "Words must always be kept, deeds must always be carried through" has its own limits, but it is sustained honesty even in private, unseen places, and cautious self-watchfulness in solitude, that gradually earns others' trust. Trust is like soil receiving rain: at first its depth is unseen, but over time it can grow the hundred grains; once exhausted, it cannot be restored by a single downpour either.

The gentle, sincere instruction of the Book of Songs likewise cultivates a person's disposition through repeated chanting. Poetry does not always compel through direct command, but uses things to evoke feeling, letting good and ill, gain and loss, enter into a person's own sentiment and will. Ritual propriety realizes reverence and yielding in bowing, ceding, advancing, and withdrawing; music lets grief and joy each find its proper measure. Together, the three constitute a moistening that does not wait until punishment falls upon a person before teaching him restraint. Master Xun's emphasis on accumulated practice is precisely because disposition can be shaped through long, sustained practice. Piling up earth makes a mountain; gathering water makes a deep pool; accumulating good makes virtue -- none of these can be hurried.

The Most High used "governing a great state is like cooking a small fish" to warn against frequent disturbance. A fish, turned over and over, falls apart; the people, if constantly disturbed by governmental command, grow weary. Good governance is at times like the moistening rain -- it does not show off its own action, and yet lets the people each pursue their own occupation. The Most High also said, "I take no action, and the people transform themselves; I love stillness, and the people rectify themselves" -- non-action (wuwei) is not the abandonment of governance, but the reduction of forcing the myriad things by private cleverness, letting fitting institutions and the personal example set by those above form a stable environment. Though its language differs from the Confucian idea of transformation through virtue, both are wary of governmental commands, too numerous and too harsh, destroying the order that things naturally generate for themselves.

Wind and rain also have their excess and their insufficiency. A violent storm topples trees; excessive rain harms the crops. Kindness without measure likewise nurtures indolence and harms the public good. Hence moistening is not unconditional satisfaction, but must fit the time and the measure. If parents, loving their children, do everything for them and indulge every desire without limit, this appears to be moistening on the surface, but in fact leaves the children unable to stand on their own. If a ruler bestows rewards without measure, this may cause his ministers to contend for favor, emptying the state's resources. The virtue of the yielding must be balanced by decisive firmness; kindness and nurturing must be regulated by ritual propriety and righteousness.

The wind and rain of Heaven and Earth favor no single thing. When rain falls, all things receive its bounty, yet different grasses and trees absorb it each according to their own nature. Virtuous governance, too, should be extended fairly, not altered by private favor toward kin, while allowing different talents each to reach their own completion within a shared instruction. So-called equality does not mean identical outcomes, but giving each thing its own path to life. That the great tree can grow to its full greatness and the small grass can fulfill its own smallness, neither hindering the other -- this is the true scene of Kun bringing things to completion.

XVI. The Revolving of Sun and Moon: Brightness Is Not Occupation, but Coming and Going

"The sun and moon revolve, one cold season and one hot season follow." The sun and moon most clearly display the constancy of the Way of Heaven, and also most clearly display the ceaselessness of change. One rises with the sun and rests with its setting; the moon has its new moon and its full moon, its light waxing and waning. They revolve without ever staying fixed, and yet never lose their proper measure. From them, a person fixes day and night, records the calendar month, and gauges the turning of the year. If Heaven and Earth are the great substance of the Yi, then the revolving of sun and moon is the most direct manifestation of the Way of change: coming and going, and yet having constancy; changing, and yet trustworthy.

Brightness here does not mean permanently filling the sky. The sun sets, the moon wanes; precisely because of this yielding and this coming and going, the myriad things are able to rest, and the other luminous body is able to appear. If there were only daytime and no night, the rhythm of activity and rest would fall into disorder; if there were only high summer and no winter storing, the strength of the land could not recover. From this one can know that brightness need not dazzle at every moment, and advance need not always seek further advance. The noble person, knowing when to advance, when to withdraw, when to survive, and when to perish, without losing his correctness, is precisely grasping the meaning of timeliness through the waxing and waning of sun and moon.

The Most High said, "When the work is accomplished and the task complete, the people all say, 'We did it ourselves,'" and also, "Accomplishing the work, yet not dwelling upon it." Sun and moon shine down without contending for the credit; the four seasons form the year without speaking of themselves. If a person, having achieved even a small merit, claims it as his own possession and demands that the multitude praise him day after day, he turns his achievement into self-aggrandizement. The Way of Qian moves vigorously, and yet this is not the same as possessing the myriad things; it initiates their beginning, and then lets Kun bring them to completion. Only one who can initiate without claiming possession, who can shine without dazzling, possesses the virtue of true revolving.

The brightness of sun and moon also inspires the clarity of the human heart's own discernment. Brightness does not mean illuminating only others while leaving oneself in the dark. If one who occupies a high position examines only the small faults of his subordinates and not his own great failings, this is a one-sided illumination; if a scholar is skilled only at discoursing on past and present and never examines his own daily words and deeds, this is bright without and dark within. Master Zeng's daily threefold self-examination is a way of keeping sun and moon within his own heart; Master Meng's "turning back to examine oneself and finding sincerity" is a way of bringing outward judgment back to its root in oneself. Only when brightness can turn back upon itself does it avoid degenerating into mere harsh scrutiny of others.

Revolving also means never abandoning one's constant office. The sun and moon do not stop simply because clouds obscure them for a time, and the noble person does not abandon virtue simply because he goes unrecognized for a time. The Master, in dire straits, still played the zither and taught, his commitment never determined by outward gain or loss. The endurance of the worthy will be discussed further below; the revolving of sun and moon has already given its image in advance. To endure is not to rigidly hold one single posture, but to sustain one's Way across every kind of circumstance, just as the sun and moon, though occupying different positions, never cease their constant revolving.

Clarity in governance must likewise accord with the passage of time. Political achievement cannot be judged by a single season's momentum alone. Over-cultivation of land may increase the harvest in the first year, yet after several years the land's strength declines; excessive taxation may fill the treasury for a time, yet over the long run the people flee and their occupations fall into ruin. The sun and moon make this clear through their cycles: every action enters into time, and its consequences may only appear later on. One who understands revolving does not sacrifice long-term benefit for immediate achievement, nor cover over accumulated resentment with momentary calm. The worthy person, in planning for the state, always aims at what can endure, not merely at what can be seen at once.

XVII. One Cold Season and One Hot Season: Opposite Seasons Together Complete the Year

Cold and heat are opposites, and yet together they complete a single year. Without cold, the gathering-in and storing cannot be accomplished; without heat, growth and nurturing are insufficient. If a person judges by bodily comfort alone, he will either resent the bitter cold or suffer from the fierce heat; but seen from the whole of ceaseless generation, each has its own office. Heaven and Earth do not take momentary comfort as their sole measure, but take, as their great measure, whether the myriad things can complete their growth, nurturing, gathering, and storing.

This is especially helpful for understanding fortune and misfortune. Some present suffering may be a necessary passage toward forming virtue and accomplishing a matter; some present pleasure may have ruin lying hidden within it. Cold is not necessarily misfortune, nor is heat necessarily fortune; one must look at the season one is in and the long-term function. Remonstrance, unpleasant to the ear, is like the cold, and yet it can check one's faults; flattery, pleasant to the ear, is like warmth, and yet it may nurture arrogance over time. Labor is hard, and yet it can support a family and complete one's work; boundless idle pleasure instead dissipates one's resolve and spirit. Hence the Yi does not judge fortune and misfortune directly by suffering and pleasure, but by whether an action accords with the season and completes things.

That there is one cold season and one hot season also shows that opposites do not occupy the same position at the same time, but come and go in succession. Harmony does not mean forcing summer heat in the depths of winter, nor forcing severe cold in the height of summer. Each season has its own dominant force, while the other lies hidden, waiting its turn to come. So it is with the firm and the yielding in human affairs: at the time for decisive action, firmness takes the lead; at the time for nurturing, yielding takes the lead. Only when principal and subordinate are clearly distinguished does one avoid confusion. So-called centrality (zhong) does not mean always taking an exact numerical half, but being cold when it is time to be cold and hot when it is time to be hot, each without excess or deficiency.

The seasonal awareness embodied in texts like the Monthly Ordinances (Yueling) was extremely concrete in pre-Qin life. Spring plowing, summer weeding, autumn harvest, winter storing; sacrifice, hunting, and corvée labor -- all had to take the season into account. If the people's farming season was seized upon, even a governmental order with lofty-sounding justification would still harm life. Master Meng's condemnation of making the people unable to plow and weed in order to support their parents places benevolent governance precisely on the ground of seasonal order. Benevolence is not vague good intention, but not disturbing the people's livelihood and not going against its rhythm.

The coming and going of cold and heat also teaches a person to bear flourishing and decline. One in the heat of summer, knowing cold is coming, prepares in advance to gather and store; one in the cold of winter, knowing spring is coming, does not despair at the present desolation. An age of order must prepare against disorder; an age of disorder must preserve the Way of order. In times of abundance, know frugality; in times of poverty, hold to one's resolve. The Most High said, "A thing that reaches its prime grows old," warning precisely that what reaches its height must decline, and one must not rely on strength alone. Master Zhuang regarded life and death as he did the four seasons, likewise settling grief and joy within the great transformation. The Confucian tradition does not, on this account, make light of the feelings attending life and death, and yet likewise demands that a person, amid grief and joy, know the Mandate of Heaven and fully carry out human relations.

For learning, cold and heat are also like manifestation and obscurity. Some people advance in virtue swiftly, their reputation growing day by day -- this is the season of summer's growth; some people are trapped in frustrated circumstance, quietly accumulating in silence -- this is the season of winter's storing. If one loves only prominence, one will act rashly when it is time to lie hidden; if one abandons oneself out of prolonged obscurity, one likewise loses the spring to come. The endurance of the worthy lies not in perpetual smooth success, but in the ability to hold to the Way through both cold and heat alike. When his ambition is realized, he extends his goodness to all under Heaven; when it is not, he cultivates himself and is made manifest to the world.

XVIII. From the Images of Heaven Back to Human Relations: "The Way of Qian Forms the Male, the Way of Kun Forms the Female"

After thunder and lightning, wind and rain, sun and moon, cold and heat, the text arrives at "the Way of Qian forms the male, the Way of Kun forms the female." This is not a sudden departure from the cosmos to speak of the family; it is precisely explaining how the transformation of Heaven and Earth is realized in the continuation of life. Male and female have never been two labels for isolated individuals, but together form a household within the relations of marriage, husband and wife, parent and child. The Way of Qian and Kun, moving from Heaven and Earth to the human body, makes ceaseless generation concrete as the continuation of the generations.

"Forming the male" and "forming the female" first of all mean coming-into-being, and should not be read merely as a matter of power and status, high or low. The male is formed through the Way of Qian, the female through the Way of Kun, each with its own image; but since Qian and Kun need each other, male and female likewise depend on each other. Without Kun, the great beginning of Qian has no way to bring anything to completion; without Qian, the completing of Kun has nothing to draw its origin from. To use the names of Qian and Kun merely to elevate one side and demean the other is to violate the very structure of rubbing and stirring, of mutual completion, that runs through the whole chapter. That the exalted and the lowly each have their place does not mean that one side can complete the world alone, apart from the other.

The Book of Songs opens with "Guanju," taking the correctness of husband and wife as the beginning of the transformation of the whole realm. The household is not some private sphere unrelated to the world at large. The closeness of father and son, the order of elder and younger brother, the distinction between husband and wife constitute the earliest place where a person learns love, responsibility, and deferential respect. A person who cannot fulfill his part within the household, yet hopes suddenly to become a loyal and trustworthy man at court, faces an extremely difficult task. Master Meng said that the root of all under Heaven lies in the state, the root of the state lies in the household, and the root of the household lies in the person -- likewise a sequence proceeding from the near to the far.

That husband and wife are distinguished does not mean they are separated, still less that they disdain one another. Distinction lets each side hold to its own responsibility; union lets the way of the household be established together. Pre-Qin ritual propriety and righteousness placed weight on the distinction between inner and outer, within a specific structure of life; to extract only the outward positions of power without seeing the mutual completion within them is to read Qian and Kun as a relation of domination. The virtue of Kun -- bearing all with depth, completing things, being capable through simplicity -- receives no lesser praise in this chapter than that of Qian. The text that follows even sets Qian and Kun side by side as the root of the worthy person's virtue and achievement, showing that neither Way can be dispensed with.

The temperament and capability of men and women cannot be exhausted by a single set of terms for the firm and the yielding. A woman, too, can hold to firm and unyielding integrity; a man, too, must have gentle and harmonious virtue. Qian and Kun are great images, not a mold that reduces every concrete person to the same shape. When the Master praised the worthy, he often praised them for combining firm resolve and plain sincerity with gentleness, kindness, reverence, frugality, and deference -- showing that the forming of virtue itself requires the harmonizing of many different qualities. If a man invokes the Way of Qian to justify recklessness and violence, this is no longer the vigor of Qian; if a woman is forced to invoke the Way of Kun to justify unprincipled submission, this too is no longer the compliance of Kun.

Looked at more deeply, every person's action contains both the aspect of Qian and the aspect of Kun. Setting one's resolve, initiating, and deciding are Qian; committing, carrying out, and nurturing are Kun. Qian without Kun produces many promises and little accomplishment; Kun without Qian produces a pile of tasks with no clear direction. For a household to generate life continuously, it needs both initiative and steadfastness; for a state to achieve lasting order, it needs both the establishment of institutions and their daily execution. The Way of Qian forming the male and the Way of Kun forming the female reveal the Way through the image of gender, without confining the Way within gender.

XIX. Ceaseless Generation Is Not an Increase in Number, but the Continuation of the Generations

The forming of male and female points toward ceaseless generation (shengsheng). Ceaseless generation is not merely an increase in the number of lives, but the transmission, across generations, of morality, ritual custom, skill, and memory. Parents bear and raise their children, and also teach them language and ritual propriety; the teacher transmits the Way and imparts learning, and later students in turn make their own discoveries; the ancient sage-kings established ritual propriety, and later ages adjusted it according to the time. Each generation both receives what already exists and initiates something for those who come after, so that every person stands, at once, in the position of both Qian and Kun.

Seen from the parents' side, generation is not possession. A child is born of its parents, and yet is not a mere instrument of the parents' private desire. To nurture and teach a child is to help him become fully himself as a person. If one demands only that a child replicate one's own inclinations, and does not allow him to establish himself according to righteousness, one turns the completion of a thing into the manufacture of a thing. Kun's bringing things to completion means letting each thing complete its own nature, not pressing the myriad things into a single mold. The earth generates the hundred grains, each with its own flavor and use; the household raises people, and should likewise let each one's talent and nature develop fittingly.

Seen from the children's side, receiving is likewise not passive enjoyment. One's very body, hair, and skin are received from one's parents; language and ritual custom are received from household and state; and having received these, one bears the responsibility of inheriting and refining them further. Filial devotion lies not only in support and provision, but in skillfully continuing the will of one's forebears and skillfully carrying forward their undertakings; if one's forebears erred, one must still remonstrate gently and correct the matter. Inheritance is not preserving old traces exactly as they are, but letting what accords with righteousness within them continue to grow, and letting what does not accord with righteousness cease to be passed on.

The Book of Documents' record that the Mandate of Heaven has no constancy, and that the rise and fall of dynasties is bound up with virtue and achievement, is likewise a kind of warning across the generations. What the ancestors accumulated in virtue cannot be permanently possessed on the strength of bloodline alone if their descendants turn tyrannical. The achievement of the ancient sage-kings was a beginning; the governance of those who inherited their position had to bring it to completion. A beginning without completion, and the foundation is sure to collapse. The people of Zhou often took the fall of Yin (Shang) as a warning to themselves, showing that the correct posture for inheriting a tradition is not self-satisfaction, but fearful self-examination and cultivation.

The transmission of learning is likewise so. That the Master "transmitted but did not create, and trusted in and loved antiquity" does not mean he lacked creativity, but that he placed creativity within inheritance. Editing and transmitting ritual and music, teaching according to each student's capacity, answering questions and discoursing on benevolence -- all of this gave the ancient Way new life in his own time. Master Meng, following him, further elaborated benevolence and righteousness, the kingly Way, and the nurturing of qi; Master Xun unfolded his thought from ritual and law, accumulated learning, and human community -- the two agreeing in some respects and differing in others. That pre-Qin thought is so rich is precisely because inheritance and creation rubbed against and stirred one another into motion, rather than following one single, rigid repetition.

Ceaseless generation also implies a responsibility toward those not yet seen. To fell every forest and drain every pond for fish today may yield much in the present, but leaves those who come after with no way to live; to destroy trust and good faith and indulge deception today means that even if later ages have laws, they must pay a tremendous price to rebuild order. True completion of a thing must be able to endure. The text that follows moves from ease and simplicity to the virtue and achievement of the worthy, already placing endurance at the very center. To complete something for only a moment is not worthy of being called a great completion; only what allows the springs of life to continue accords with Qian and Kun.

XX. Qian and Kun Are Not an Abstract Duality, but the Beginning and Completion of Every Single Thing

Reading this far, one can look back at the first half of the whole chapter. Heaven and Earth, low and high, movement and stillness, the firm and the yielding, gathering by kind, dividing by group, image and shape -- all of these finally converge into beginning and completion. Every matter has a side where intention first sprouts and action is set in motion, and a side where conditions are received, process is realized, and result takes shape. Qian and Kun are thus at once as vast as to encompass Heaven and Earth, and as close as to be inseparable from a single word or a single deed.

Setting one's resolve is the beginning; accumulating learning is the completion. Issuing governance is the beginning; the people receiving its benefit is the completion. Marriage is the beginning; the household enduring long without falling is the completion. Forming an alliance is the beginning; standing together through hardship is the completion. Conceiving an implement is the beginning; choosing the material and fashioning it is the completion. If one substitutes mere speech for actual completion, one becomes infatuated with the brilliance of the beginning; if one attends only to trivial execution without asking after the purpose, one likewise loses the direction of the beginning. The Yi sets the two side by side, demanding that the opening correspond to its effect.

Master Guiguzi, skilled in discussing the planning of beginnings, the discerning of the incipient moment, and acting according to configuration, reminds a person that initiating a matter cannot but be done with caution. While a matter is still small, it is still easy to redirect; once many forces have been invested and a reputation or configuration has already formed, the cost of changing course rises sharply. Hence the beginning requires knowledge. The discourse on statecraft transmitted by Master Guan (Guanzi), by contrast, places especially great weight on institutions, resources, agriculture and warfare, and granary storage, bringing intention down into matters that can actually be carried out -- embodying the achievement of completion. To speak only of benevolent intention without knowing the actual workings of governance may leave benevolence with no way to be put into practice; to know only techniques and calculations without any direction of benevolence and righteousness may turn achievement into harm.

The Master said, "The noble person wishes to be slow in speech but quick in action," precisely warning against words that begin a thing which action then fails to complete. Speech is extremely easy to set in motion; action is difficult to sustain through to the end. Once a promise is made, it must be fulfilled over time. He also said, "First carry out what you would say, and let your words follow after," placing completion before speech, so as to guard against much beginning and little completion. Qian knowing through ease does not encourage careless speech; Kun being capable through simplicity does not mean that things are easily accomplished either. Ease and simplicity mean that the great Way is not thrown into confusion by private cleverness; realizing it still requires vigorous motion and generous bearing.

Master Meng developed "benevolent governance" from "the heart that cannot bear to see others suffer" -- the heart is the beginning, governance is the completion. If compassion remains only a momentary feeling, unable to establish institutions that let widowers, widows, orphans, and the childless be cared for, and that keep the farming season from being seized upon, then benevolence has not been completed. Conversely, if institutions have no compassion as their root, they too may treat people as mere numbers to be counted. Inner heart and outward governance, virtue and achievement, are precisely like Qian and Kun: virtuous intention supplies the beginning, and undertaking brings things to completion.

The Most High valued non-action (wuwei), and also said, "Act upon it before it exists; govern it before it falls into disorder." The place before existence and before disorder is closest to the beginning, and it is here that one who discerns the incipient moment exerts effort. Yet non-action does not mean failing to accomplish anything, but "taking no action, and yet leaving nothing undone" -- letting a matter come to completion according to its own natural order, while reducing the disturbance caused by private intention. The beginning and completion of Qian and Kun can illuminate, and be illuminated by, the Daoist teaching that being and non-being generate each other: being sprouts from the incipient moment of the formless, and comes to completion in concrete vessels; and once a vessel is completed, it in turn becomes the condition for the next change.

XXI. "Qian Knows the Great Beginning": Knowing Is Not Passive Observation, but the Clarity of Initiation

"Qian knows the great beginning; Kun brings things to completion." This sentence speaks of the virtue of Qian and Kun in terms of knowing and doing. Qian's "knowing" is not recording, after the fact, something that has already happened, but discerning the incipient moment, fixing the direction, and setting the beginning in motion. The great beginning has not yet become the concrete myriad things, and yet it already contains the fundamental possibility from which the myriad things can arise. Heaven moves through qi, and the four seasons proceed from this; the noble person establishes himself through resolve, and virtue and achievement unfold from this. Without a beginning, there is nothing from which to speak of completion afterward; if the beginning is not correct, the further one proceeds, the harder it becomes to remedy.

The "great" in "knowing the great beginning" lies first in what it governs as a whole. The initiation of a governmental decree cannot know only its immediate, single effect, but must also see how it will draw upon the people's livelihood, the use of resources, custom, and border defense. The beginning of a family's upbringing cannot seek only a child's momentary obedience, but must also ask what disposition it will cultivate. The beginning of scholarship cannot seek only literary brilliance that surpasses others, but must first discern why one is learning at all. Only one who can set the direction from the whole comes close to knowing the great beginning; one who sees only immediate advantage and not the long term, only one aspect and not the mutual stirring of the whole, however clever, remains small.

Knowing the beginning is also knowing the incipient moment (ji). At the point of the faintly incipient, a matter has not yet become fully manifest, and judgment is especially difficult. Before great disorder arises, one may see only that slanderous speech is gaining ground and the worthy are being kept at a distance; before great order is achieved, one may see only that a certain official has begun to listen to the people's sentiment and economize on expenditure. The ordinary person values a shape already formed; the sage discerns an image about to form. To wait until the flood has already breached the dike before controlling it is already too late; to observe it while the soil is still damp and the springs are just beginning to well up brings small effort and great effect. To wait until the people's hearts are entirely lost before seeking their support is already too late; to reform governance while grumbling has only just begun can still be retrieved.

The various hexagrams of the Yi often use the first line to signal the meaning of the beginning. The first position is lowly, the matter not yet flourished, and it appears not worth much attention -- yet it is in fact what the later configuration proceeds from. Treading on frost and thereby knowing that solid ice is approaching does not exaggerate a thin layer of frost into a great calamity, but understands the principle of gradual accumulation. A good intention, if nurtured at its first sprouting, can form virtue; a bad habit, if indulged at its first sprouting, will also become entrenched. The Most High said, "A tree that fills the arms grows from the tiniest shoot; a nine-story terrace rises from a heap of earth; a journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one's feet" -- likewise tracing great completion back to its faint beginning.

Qian knowing the great beginning also means that the one who initiates bears a heavier responsibility. A single thought of one who occupies a high position may be magnified through the hundred officials; a single word of a teacher or elder may be taken up by later students as a standard. If the beginning is carried out carelessly, the more effectively those below execute it, the greater the consequence becomes. Qian and Kun must match one another: the stronger Kun's capacity to bring things to completion, the more correct Qian's beginning must be. Execution alone, without questioning the direction, may achieve harm with great efficiency; direction alone, with no one to carry it out, remains an empty scheme.

Nor should the distinction between knowing and doing turn into valuing knowing while despising doing. That Qian is the great beginning is certainly to be honored, and yet Kun's bringing of things to completion is likewise irreplaceable. The Confucian tradition of the pre-Qin era consistently opposed regarding mere eloquence as worthiness. The Master listened to a person's words and then observed his conduct; Master Xun distinguished knowing it, doing it, and being at ease in it, placing the greatest weight on accumulated practice forming habit. If knowing never enters into doing, there is no way to test whether what is known is even true. The clarity of initiation must be willing to entrust itself to the long process of bringing things to completion.

XXII. Why the Great Beginning Is Not Private Intention

A person, too, can initiate, but not every new thought deserves to be called a "great beginning." A stirring of private desire is also a beginning; a scheme of deception is also a beginning; yet neither can be equated with Qian's knowing of the great beginning. What makes Qian's beginning great is that it flows into the ceaseless generation of Heaven and Earth, and does not harm the myriad things for the sake of one's own private benefit. To judge whether a given beginning accords with the Way of Qian, one must see whether it can open a path to life for more living beings, whether it can withstand the test of time, and whether it can complete itself together with the Way of Kun.

The Master said, "Wishing to establish himself, he establishes others; wishing to reach his own goals, he helps others reach theirs" -- establishing oneself while at the same time considering the establishment of others already goes beyond private intention. If one seeks only one's own advancement, using the hardship of the multitude as a stepping-stone, then however vigorous and firm the momentum, it is not the virtue of Qian. Master Meng's distinction between the kingly Way and the way of the hegemon likewise hinges on the heart from which one initiates and the righteousness one carries out. One who practices benevolence through virtue begins from a heart that cannot bear to see others suffer; one who borrows benevolence through force begins from the pursuit of profit and fame. Outwardly, both may effectively hold alliances and covenants together, but their inward direction differs, and what each finally completes will differ in the end as well.

The Guanzi says that governing a state requires enriching the people -- when the people are rich, the state is easy to govern; when the people are poor, the state is difficult to govern. If one who governs, in planning the use of resources, takes only a full treasury as the beginning, disregarding the people's livelihood, he severs the state from its people. A true great beginning must take ruler and people, near and far, granary and field, agriculture and sericulture all into account together. True greatness lies not in scale that dazzles others, but in encompassing many relations and in what it completes being able to endure.

Mozi's advocacy of "loving all equally, benefiting one another mutually," and his criticism of "hating separately, harming one another mutually," also seeks to extend the beginning of action from the private household to the whole world. His specific proposals differ from the Confucian tradition, but his diagnosis that partiality leads to contention and plunder can be considered together with the "great beginning." If the beginning is calculated only from one's own household and one's own person, and everyone does likewise, the result will in the end be mutual harm. Only by extending oneself to others, so that benefit is not built upon harming others, does the beginning gain a public measure.

The Most High, meanwhile, warned that "all under Heaven is a sacred vessel, and cannot be forced." The more confident a person is in his own ability to shape the world through private cleverness, the more likely he is to harm the order things generate for themselves. The great beginning is not the boundless expansion of individual will, but a beginning that accords with the Way. One who truly knows how to begin first listens to the principle already manifest in Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things, and only then decides how to act; he does not regard himself as a sovereign creating being out of nothing. Though Qian's beginning is active, it still "knows" before it begins -- knowing the time, knowing the position, knowing what it must wait upon, only then can it set forth.

Hence the great beginning holds both courage and reverence together. Without courage, one may know what ought to be done and yet fail to act, and the opportunity will be lost; without reverence, one who acts on his own self-certainty will cause harm to the multitude. Courage keeps him from shrinking back out of difficulty; reverence keeps him from acting rashly out of mere strength. If Qian's vigor departs from reverence, it easily turns to overreach; if Qian's knowing departs from humility, it easily falls prey to private bias. A true great beginning is so often preceded by a deep and thorough self-restraint.

XXIII. "Kun Brings Things to Completion": Completion Is Not Receiving a Result, but Personally Seeing It Through

The "act" (zuo) in "brings things to completion" frees the virtue of Kun from any shadow of passivity. Kun receives Qian's beginning, and yet it is no empty vessel. A seed has the spring of life within it, but still needs the soil to receive it, rain and dew to soak into it, and time to accumulate; a governmental decree may carry good intention, but still needs officials to carry it out, resources to be allocated, and the common people to take part; a teaching may hold the great Way, but still needs scholars to recite, deliberate upon, and practice it. Kun's acting is precisely what turns possibility into reality.

Bringing things to completion first requires patience. The beginning is often a single instant; completion unfolds over time. Setting one's resolve can happen in a morning; breaking an ingrained habit may take many years. Issuing a decree can be done in a single day; restoring the people's strength requires several years. Becoming husband and wife may take the span of a wedding ceremony; the completion of the household's way lies in long companionship. If one demands, with the enthusiasm of the beginning, that completion appear at once, a person easily gives up halfway. Kun's deep bearing of things means being able to endure the repetitions, the delays, and the invisibility that occur within a process.

Bringing things to completion also requires meticulous care. The great beginning governs its overall direction, but concrete things differ from one another in a thousand ways. Tilling a field requires distinguishing soil and rainfall; governing the people requires discerning rich and poor, strong and weak; teaching others requires knowing their talent and disposition, when to advance and when to hold back. If one presses only grand principles down upon everything, without asking after the concrete circumstances, the thing cannot be completed. The "simplicity" of the Yi is by no means crudeness; it is precisely because it does not let trifling private decrees interfere that it can let each thing complete itself according to its own principle. Simplicity grasps the root; it does not omit the details.

Master Xun's discussion of accumulation best illustrates Kun's acting. Half-steps accumulate into a thousand miles; small streams accumulate into rivers and seas; a fine steed cannot leap ten paces in a single bound, but an inferior horse, given ten days' journey, achieves its merit precisely by never stopping. Completing a thing does not depend on some occasional flash of inspiration, but on steady, sustained action. People's talents differ, but any virtue that can be learned must be practiced matter by matter. Ritual propriety is not achieved merely by memorizing its names, but is formed as a bodily habit through every single act of advancing, withdrawing, and deferring. Only when accumulated over long duration does it settle into ease, transformed from an external norm into one's own inner virtue.

Master Meng said that the five grains are the finest of seeds, and yet if they are not allowed to ripen, they are worth less than wild grass. A fine seed is only a good beginning; unripened, it still cannot be eaten. If the sprout of a benevolent heart is not extended and expanded, if intelligence and talent are not put into actual practice, both are like unripened grain. Extension and expansion do not mean amplifying by mere emotion, but seeing compassion when a child is about to fall into a well, and being able to extend that same compassion to the hunger, cold, and the successes and failures of governance and punishment among the common people. To carry a single momentary feeling through to a consistent policy -- this is precisely the virtue of Kun.

Kun's bringing things to completion also carries within it the refusal to contend for credit. So many of those who actually complete a matter are not its original proposers, and their labor and merit are not always visible to others. The farmer brings the hundred grains to completion; the artisan brings implements to completion; the woman who manages silk and hemp and household affairs brings the daily life of a household to completion. If such achievements are obscured by the rhetoric of those above, society comes to slight substantial work and prize empty reputation instead. That the Yi raises up the virtue of Kun so highly is precisely an affirmation, at the most fundamental level, of the achievement of receiving and completing. Without countless silent acts of doing, no "great beginning" could ever stand at all.

XXIV. How Knowing and Doing Correct One Another

Though Qian's knowing and Kun's doing are distinguished, they cannot be separated into two households. Knowing sets the direction for doing; doing lets knowing be tested. Whether an idea accords with the actual principle of things cannot be proven in words alone; once put into practice, the response of people and things reveals what was previously unseen. The result of doing then, in turn, enriches knowing, and prompts the next, better round of beginning. Knowing and doing rub against one another, and virtue and achievement are thereby renewed day by day.

The Master said, "To learn and, at due times, to practice what one has learned" -- learning inclines toward receiving knowledge, practice inclines toward repeated action. Learning without practice leaves what is known floating on the mouth and ear alone; practice without reflection may turn action into mere mechanism. He also said, "Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous," letting external learning and internal reflection correct one another. Pre-Qin Confucian learning never chose only one side, but demanded that hearing and seeing, reflection, and practice all communicate with one another.

Master Xun said that without climbing a high mountain, one does not know the height of Heaven; without approaching a deep ravine, one does not know the depth of the Earth. Direct experience can correct imagination. If one who governs the state does not know the hardship of farm labor, and issues orders based only on figures from the treasury, then knowing is severed from the actual thing; if one who discusses warfare does not observe terrain and morale, but only recites battle formations from memory, then doing is bound to fail. Hence the noble person studies broadly and daily examines himself against it -- hearing widely, and also reflecting upon his own conduct.

The Guanzi's emphasis on concrete matters of governance -- granaries, the advantages of terrain, the weighing of relative importance -- offers the Confucian virtuous intention a reference point in the completion of things. If benevolent governance cannot answer how grain is to be stored, how labor service is to be arranged, how flood and drought are to be relieved, it easily stops at good words alone; but technique without the direction of benevolence and righteousness likewise turns the people into resources to be manipulated. Setting the knowing of the great beginning alongside the doing of bringing things to completion allows virtue and technique to remain inseparable: virtue fixes the direction, technique accomplishes the task; technique is regulated by virtue, and virtue is made substantial through technique.

The scheming, probing, and testing that Master Guiguzi speaks of, skilled at discerning human feeling and the changes of affairs, can help one who acts to understand complex interactions. But cunning strategy especially needs to be corrected by the great beginning. If one has only the ability to accomplish things, without asking what is thereby accomplished, cleverness may become a calamity. Being able to persuade, to control others, to achieve victory -- these are all merely "capability"; whether they accord with righteousness, whether they can endure, is what determines whether they enter into the achievement of the worthy.

Within a single person's life, the cycle of knowing and doing can also dissolve self-deception. People often substitute "I know" for "I have done," and substitute an occasional act for virtue already formed. True knowing changes action; true doing deepens understanding. To know filial devotion and yet be unable to attend to one's parents' warmth in winter and coolness in summer, to inquire after their peace morning and evening, is not yet true knowing; to perform filial acts occasionally while the heart is constantly resentful is virtue not yet formed. Only by continually moving back and forth between knowing and doing can one move from forced effort to easy, natural conduct.

XXV. "Qian Knows Through Ease, Kun Is Capable Through Simplicity": Ease and Simplicity Are Not Superficiality or Shortcut

At this point in the chapter comes a sentence most easily read too lightly, and yet in truth among the deepest: "Qian knows through ease, Kun is capable through simplicity." Ease and simplicity are how the virtue of Qian and Kun manifests itself in what a person can know, can follow, can make endure, and can make grow great. If the Way of Heaven and Earth were dark, tortuous, and entirely reliant on cunning and deceit, a person would have no way to draw close to it; if the achievement of bringing things to completion were burdened with endless, vexatious contrivance, the myriad things would have no way to follow it. The Way of Qian is upright, great, and shining bright, and so it is easy to know; the Way of Kun follows principle and forms its own pattern, and so it is capable through simplicity.

"Ease" does not mean carelessness, nor that everything is entirely without difficulty. Heaven's motion is vast and boundless, beyond a person's ability to exhaust, and yet it does not show itself to people through deceit. The sun and moon have their constancy, the four seasons have their order, and good and evil, gain and loss, have a principle that can be traced. The basic direction of the great Way can be grasped through human relations and daily life: filial devotion to parents, trustworthiness to friends, righteous taking, benevolence toward the people -- none of these require first mastering some arcane technique before one can even begin. The Master said, "Is benevolence indeed far off$2 I desire benevolence, and benevolence is at hand" -- precisely because the Way of benevolence sets up no hidden threshold.

"Simplicity" likewise does not mean carelessness or negligence, but grasping the root and reducing unnecessary disturbance. The Earth receives Heaven's seasons and lets the myriad things grow each according to its own nature, without issuing a separate command to every single blade of grass. Good governance establishes trustworthy laws, employs the worthy and capable, lightens labor service and taxation, letting the common people each diligently pursue their own occupation; bad governance changes its orders morning and evening, multiplies documents, and tangles names and categories, leaving people with nowhere to turn. Being capable through simplicity means achieving great effect with little private contrivance.

The words of the Most High can be viewed alongside this especially well. "The great Way is very level, and yet the people love byways" -- the great Way is level and easy, and yet people love to take deviant little paths. "In governing people and serving Heaven, nothing surpasses being sparing" -- to be sparing is to cherish one's strength, not to disturb things carelessly. He also said, "The more laws and orders are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there are," showing that more elaborate institutions are not necessarily better governed; if the root itself has lost its correctness, elaborate laws instead provide more room for cunning and deceit. Both ease and simplicity oppose letting artificially constructed complexity obscure the natural order of things.

The Confucian tradition likewise honors substance and rejects cunning. The Master said, "Clever words and an ingratiating countenance are seldom signs of benevolence," because excessive ornamentation so often separates speech from the heart. The words of the benevolent person may be plain and direct, and their trustworthiness lies precisely in the correspondence between inner and outer. Master Zeng, transmitting the Master's Way, summed it up as conscientiousness and empathetic reciprocity (zhong shu) -- few in words, broad in meaning, able to run through countless situations of human relation. That the great Way can be shown to people in near and direct language is not a poverty of content, but a clarity at the root.

The difficulty of ease and simplicity lies precisely in the fact that private desire constantly manufactures complexity. A person unwilling to acknowledge his own fault will weave together many excuses; one intent on private gain will set up layer upon layer of pretexts to conceal it. If governance takes the people's livelihood as its root, many choices can be decided clearly; if it must also accommodate the private interests of the powerful, its laws grow ever more convoluted. Hence, returning to ease and simplicity is not merely trimming away outward form, but rectifying the heart and removing private interest. When the heart is correct, speech is straightforward; when resolve is public-spirited, commands are clear.

XXVI. The Knowability of Ease: Why the Great Way Must Be Open to Ordinary People

If the Way of Heaven and Earth could be known only by a tiny few, with everyone else able only to follow blindly, the Yi could never become the Way of all under Heaven. That Qian knows through ease shows that although the Way is lofty and bright, it is never separate from the common people's daily life. Everyone can begin from loving one's kin, respecting one's elders, keeping faith, and knowing shame; everyone can likewise observe cold and heat, movement and stillness, gain and loss. Learning has its depths, but the gateway into it is monopolized by no mystery.

Master Meng said, "The Way is like a great road -- how could it be hard to know$1 The trouble is that people do not seek it." A great road can be seen by everyone; the difficulty lies not in some deliberate concealment, but in people being led astray by private desire and unwilling to seek it out. He further traced the Way of the ancient sages back to filial devotion and brotherly respect, realizing the highest Way in the daily life of the family. This is not lowering the sagely Way, but showing that sage and ordinary person communicate with one another. If a person cannot even fulfill filial devotion and brotherly respect, and yet delights in discussing what is lofty and abstruse, this is abandoning the near to seek the far.

Master Xun, by contrast, stressed that learning has its proper sequence. Though the Way can be known, a person still needs a teacher's example, accumulated practice, and single-minded concentration. Being easy to know does not mean grasping it all in a single hearing. The road is level and straight, and yet the traveler must still walk it step by step; the meaning of the classics is clear, and yet ingrained habit may still obstruct its practice. Hence ease can be approached, but not treated lightly; simplicity can be followed, but not used as an excuse for laziness. To mistake ease and simplicity for needing no effort at all is to explain the great Way by mere desire.

The Mozi hoped that every statement would have a basis, an origin, and a use, tested against ancient precedent, the experience of the common people, and the benefit of the state and its people. This demand, too, carries the sense of dispelling secrecy. If a proposition cannot be examined by others and is proclaimed on authority alone, it easily becomes a deception of the world. Though the various schools disputed over benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and music, pre-Qin thought generally valued that speech be verifiable and action be usable. That Qian is easy to know by no means rejects debate, but means that it can withstand open scrutiny and debate.

Master Guiguzi's techniques place great weight on secrecy, and have their use in diplomacy and in facing an adversary; yet if every human relation were treated as a game of opening and closing, the closeness of kin and friends would lose its genuineness. What being easy to know accomplishes is "having closeness" -- people are able to be close to one another precisely because they can understand and trust one another. If family members spend every day guessing at each other's hidden intentions, and friends guard against each other's every scheme in every sentence, such a relation cannot endure. Technique may respond to extraordinary matters, but the Way must establish everyday trust.

That the Master did not speak of oddities, feats of strength, disorder, or spirits likewise brought learning back into the realm of what human relations can put into practice. Revering ghosts and spirits while keeping a distance from them, and "not yet being able to serve the living, how could one serve the spirits" -- neither denies sacrifice, but refuses to let people use talk of the distant and obscure to escape the responsibility right before them. The brightness of the Way of Qian lies in this: what ought to be done is, for the most part, plainly evident. The difficulty is so often not "not knowing that one should be filial, righteous, or trustworthy," but whether one can carry it out when actual interest is at stake.

XXVII. The Followability of Simplicity: Good Order Lets People Act

"Being simple, it is easy to follow." Once a principle can be known, there must also be a path by which it can be carried out. If institutions are so complex that the common people cannot understand them, if ritual observances are so minutely detailed that everyone stumbles into fault at every turn, if orders conflict with one another, then however fine the stated aim, it cannot be followed. Kun being capable through simplicity turns the clear direction set by Qian into a practice that can be sustained.

The first condition of simplicity is clarity between name and actuality. Why a reward is given, why a punishment is imposed, where taxes come from and where they are used, whose responsibility a duty falls under -- all of this should be fixed and clear. When categories are ambiguous, those who carry them out shift the blame onto one another; when rules are too numerous and contradict one another, the cunning can manipulate them at will, and the honest suffer for it instead. The Guanzi's emphasis that once a command is issued it must be carried out, and that the law must be unified, is precisely because a community needs predictability. Followability does not demand thoughtless obedience, but lets people know how to fulfill their own duty.

Ritual propriety, too, has the effect of simplicity-capability within a mature community. How to advance and withdraw before an elder, how to express grief in mourning, how to receive one another as host and guest -- all have their commonly accepted forms, so that people need not argue everything from scratch each time. Ritual propriety condenses the experience of generations into a workable form, saving the cost of conflict. But if ritual propriety is reduced to mere elaborate ornament, forgetting the root of reverence, grief, and deference, it turns from simple back into complex. The Master said that in ritual, rather than extravagance, better frugality; in mourning, rather than smooth formality, better genuine grief -- precisely a return to the root. Ceremonial forms should help true feeling take shape; they should not obscure true feeling.

The simplicity of governmental decree also comes from those above restraining their own desires. If the ruler's desires know no limit, officials must constantly extract more; palaces, gardens, military campaigns, and amusements each generate new demands, and laws naturally multiply day by day. If those above are frugal and take from the people according to a fixed measure, many disturbing institutions need not even be established, and simplicity follows of itself. What the Most High called "I have no desire, and the people become simple of themselves" does not attribute all social problems entirely to individual moral disposition, but points out that the desires of those above expand, layer upon layer, through institutions.

The simplicity of moral instruction lies in giving people a clear, sustainable practice. Honoring one's parents daily, dealing honestly with friends, concentrating on one's own occupation, correcting oneself upon hearing of one's fault -- these appear ordinary, and yet they can be sustained a whole lifetime. If, at the very outset, one presses people with lofty and distant rhetoric, making them feel that sagehood and worthiness are beyond learning, this is not easily followed. When the Master taught his disciples, he generally guided them according to their immediate faults, rather than imposing the same set of words on everyone. The path differs from person to person; the root remains simple and clear.

Simplicity also requires leaving room for one's own initiative. To fix every single step in rigid detail leaves those who carry it out appearing obedient, and yet in fact unable to adapt to change. Kun's bringing things to completion is not Qian doing everything on Kun's behalf. Those above establish the general outline; those in office act according to the circumstances; the teacher points the direction; the student must think and practice for himself; parents establish the household's rules; children must take up their own responsibility. If those above take everything upon themselves, the capability of those below grows weaker day by day; the order may appear meticulous on the surface, but in fact cannot endure.

XXVIII. Ease and Simplicity Do Not Reject Complexity, but Refuse to Be Enslaved by It

The affairs of the world are inherently complex. Mountains and rivers each have their own configuration; human feeling has ten thousand forms; matters of governance pull upon one another; the images of the hexagrams stir one another into motion. The Yi never denies complexity -- otherwise there would be no need for sixty-four hexagrams and three hundred eighty-four lines. The meaning of ease and simplicity is not to delete complex reality, but to grasp the fundamental relations within complexity, so that a person can know and can act.

Treating illness requires discerning the pattern of symptoms; governing a state requires observing custom; discussing warfare requires examining strength and weakness -- none of these can be handled by a single formula covering every situation. And yet the root of discerning symptoms is preserving life; the root of observing custom is giving the people peace and achieving order; the root of examining strength and weakness is avoiding harm and achieving victory. If one forgets the root, the more details there are, the more one is lost. Simplicity is like the plumb-line and ink-marker, giving the ten thousand particulars a standard; ease is like a bright lamp, keeping one from losing direction amid every twist and turn.

The changes of the Sunzi's art of war are extremely numerous, and yet its guiding thread is knowing the enemy and knowing oneself, avoiding strength and striking weakness, achieving victory by adapting to the enemy. The concrete deployment cannot be fixed in advance, and yet the fundamental judgment remains clear. Master Guiguzi's arts of alliance and counter-alliance are likewise manifold in their changes, and yet take discerning feeling, examining configuration, and knowing speech as essential. That the arts of the various schools can be learned at all always depends on the guiding thread governing the particulars. Complexity without a guiding thread is mere disorder; complexity with a guiding thread is true subtlety.

A person's inner heart, too, can use complexity to evade a simple responsibility. Knowing full well that one ought to apologize, one instead repeatedly analyzes the other party's fault; knowing full well that one ought not take something, one instead discusses many exceptions; knowing full well that one ought to study diligently, one keeps searching endlessly for a better method. Complex thought is sometimes necessary, but sometimes it is merely desire delaying action. Being easy to know demands seeing the plainest righteousness clearly; being simple to follow demands taking the very next step first. The Way of Qian and Kun is vast and great, and yet it never shelters indecision.

Conversely, mistaking crudeness for simplicity is equally dangerous. Facing famine and saying only that the people should work harder, facing litigation and saying only that both sides should each yield a little, facing differences in talent and examining everyone by the very same measure -- this is not simplicity, but laziness. True simplicity comes from a summary drawn after thorough observation, one that can still accommodate difference; crude simplicity refuses observation altogether, covering incompetence with an empty phrase.

Ease and simplicity therefore demand that lofty brilliance and the constant mean (zhongyong) be joined together. One who is loftily brilliant sees the whole; one who follows the constant mean carries out daily practice. Loftiness without grounding easily turns into abstruse talk; daily practice without a view of the whole easily turns into mere triviality. That the noble person "reaches the utmost of loftiness and brilliance while following the constant mean" is precisely a going back and forth between the vast and the near at hand. The principle of Heaven and Earth does not lie outside daily life, and the affairs of daily life, too, can lead through to Heaven and Earth.

XXIX. "Being Easy to Know, It Wins Closeness": Closeness Comes from Truthfulness and Clarity

The Way of Qian, being easy to know, thereupon "wins closeness." Closeness first of all means drawing near. If the great Way deliberately affects an air of profundity, making people fear and dare not approach it, it cannot transform the people and form good custom. The Way of benevolence and righteousness can be drawn close to precisely because it responds to what a person already possesses -- love of kin, shame at evil, deference, the sense of right and wrong -- and is realized in visible conduct. The young can know how to love their parents, the elder can know how to respect their seniors; though not yet complete, this is already the gate by which one enters the Way.

"Closeness" also carries the sense of trust. A person whose words and deeds are clear and who harbors no hidden scheming is one others are willing to associate with; a government whose decrees are stable and whose public and private dealings can be distinguished is one the people are willing to trust. That Qian is easy to know does not mean exposing every single thought without reserve, but not making deceit one's constant way. Military affairs may employ surprise, diplomacy may require discretion, but if the ordinary governance of daily life relies entirely on deception, society loses the very foundation of closeness.

The Master said, "Without trust, the people cannot stand." Trust matters so much because shared life is full of commitments entrusted to the future. In trade, one must trust the other party to honor the agreement; in friendship, one must trust that the other will not betray it; in farming, the people must trust that governmental decrees will not suddenly change. Only what can be known can be anticipated, and only what can be anticipated allows closeness to form. If one set of words is spoken today and another tomorrow, however convenient in the moment, over time no one will be willing to draw close.

Master Meng, discussing the kingly Way, often spoke of sharing joy with the people, and of how extending one's kindness suffices to secure the four seas. Extending kindness lets the intention of those above be perceived by the people, and lets policy enter into daily life. If one professes to love the people, while fat meat sits in the kitchen and fat horses stand in the stable, while the people wear a hungry look and corpses lie starved in the open fields, then word and reality fail to correspond, and the people naturally do not draw close. Closeness is not achieved through propaganda, but through sustained virtuous governance that lets the people see it for themselves over time.

Nor is closeness unprincipled flattery. Parents love their children, and yet must still teach them; friends grow close to one another, and yet must still correct each other's faults; ministers are loyal to their ruler, and yet must still remonstrate. If winning others' favor becomes the highest goal, righteousness may be sacrificed. True closeness is built upon shared trust in the great Way, and so it can accommodate words unpleasant to the ear. Flattery wins momentary closeness that cannot endure; honest counsel, though it may distance one for a moment, reveals its sincerity over time.

That the Way of Qian, being easy to know, wins closeness also shows that the Way of leadership should reduce mystery. If those above hide all information, standards, rewards, and punishments within their own private intention, forcing those below to survive by guesswork, the group is bound to grow full of flattery and deceit. When rules are clear, direction is correct, and words can be trusted once spoken, people can devote their energy to accomplishing things. Being open and upright is not merely a moral posture; it is also a force that gathers people together.

XXX. "Being Easy to Follow, It Achieves Merit": Merit Is an Achievement in Which the Multitude Can Take Part

The Way of Kun is simple, and so it is easy to follow; being easy to follow, it achieves merit. Here, merit is not one person's boastful record of conquest, but a matter brought to completion and the myriad things benefiting from it. However good a beginning, if only a tiny few can carry it out, it cannot become an undertaking of the whole world. Only when the path is simple and clear, responsibility is distinct, the burden bearable, and the multitude both willing and able to follow, can merit accumulate.

Controlling floodwaters cannot be accomplished by a single command; it requires knowing the terrain, channeling the rivers and marshes, gathering manpower, and supplying grain. If orders are chaotic and labor service has no fixed season, the people, though coerced, can hardly achieve anything. Conversely, when the overall direction is fitting, each locality channels the water according to its own configuration, and the multitude knows what it is doing, small individual works accumulate into a great achievement. This is precisely Kun's capability through simplicity: not doing nothing, but letting the ten thousand tasks each find their proper order.

The Master, discussing governance, stressed raising up the upright and setting aside the crooked, so that the people would respect their ruler, be loyal, and encourage one another. When the right people are employed, each office fulfills its own function, and those above need not personally manage every small detail. If every matter is decided by one person alone, power appears concentrated on the surface, but in fact both above and below grow exhausted. Being easy to follow demands trusting those with virtue and talent, and also demands that division of labor and responsibility be clearly defined. The ruler's Way does not contend with ministers over their offices, just as Qian's beginning does not do Kun's completing in its place.

The Guanzi stresses "giving in order to take" -- one who governs must first give the people their livelihood and convenience before he can draw upon their strength for the affairs of state. Being easy to follow does not mean manipulation, but policy according with people's legitimate needs. When the common people see that labor brings them sustenance and that obeying the law protects their household, they are willing to take part. If boundless sacrifice is demanded without any guarantee of livelihood, sustained only by the awe of punishment, merit cannot endure.

Merit must also be judged by its object. Attacking cities and seizing territory is merit; defending one's borders and giving the people peace is also merit. Amassing wealth in the treasury may be recorded as merit; storing wealth among the people may likewise be called merit. If the measure is not correct, the more capable one is, the more one may harm the world. This chapter first fixes the direction through Qian's knowing of the great beginning, and only then speaks of Kun's bringing things to completion; hence "achieving merit" is bound by the knowing of the great beginning. Being able to accomplish something does not mean everything accomplished is good; the achievement of the worthy must accord with the principle of all under Heaven.

In self-cultivation, achieving merit means that virtuous conduct produces actual effect. Learning forbearance reduces contention and anger; learning frugality regulates household expenditure; learning trustworthiness lets friends entrust themselves to one; learning reverence keeps one's conduct from carelessness. If one's learning makes one's speech more lofty and yet makes one difficult for kin and friends to deal with, one must examine whether one's so-called knowing is genuine. The Way of Kun tests virtuous intention by its result; merit is no empty name, but people and things truly finding their proper place because of it.

XXXI. "Having Closeness, It Can Endure": Endurance Is Built Upon Trust

That closeness leads to endurance is a judgment both extremely plain and extremely far-reaching in this chapter. Force can compel people for a moment; interest can gather people for a moment; cleverness can beguile people for a moment; only closeness and trust can let a relation withstand the passage of time. Closeness does not mean over-familiarity, but that each side trusts the other's intention can be known, the other's action can be anticipated, and the other's faults can be gently remonstrated against. Only a relation of this kind can withstand hardship, misunderstanding, and unforeseen change.

The endurance of a state depends, first of all, on the hearts of its people. Fortified walls, sharp weapons and sturdy armor, and full granaries are all important, but if the people regard those above as enemies, they may well scatter the moment foreign trouble arrives. What Master Meng called "the timeliness of Heaven is not as good as the advantage of terrain, and the advantage of terrain is not as good as the harmony of the people" does not belittle the timeliness of Heaven or the advantage of terrain, but points out that the harmony of the people can organize the other conditions together. When the people feel close to those above, they are willing to defend the city, contribute their strength, and share in hardship; when the people do not feel close to those above, even the sturdiest city may have no one willing to defend it.

The endurance of a household's way likewise lies not in the amount of its property, but in closeness and righteousness. If father and son have only coercive submission without kindness and filial devotion, if elder and younger brother have only calculation of mutual advantage without friendliness and respect, if husband and wife have only formal titles without mutual completion, then the more property the family has, the fiercer the contention may become. If closeness of feeling is left to run on natural sentiment alone, without being regulated by righteousness, it too may fall into partiality and disorder; hence closeness must be nurtured by ritual propriety, and made firm by trust. Ritual propriety gives love its proper measure; righteousness keeps closeness from harming the public good.

The endurance of friendship even more directly embodies being easy to know. When neither side deceives the other, and their association is trustworthy, over time each comes to know the other's heart; if speech always conceals hidden schemes, and association is calculated only by gain and loss, it becomes difficult to entrust oneself to the other. The Master said, "A person without trustworthiness -- I do not know how he can function," like a large cart without a yoke-bar or a small cart without a linchpin, having lost the pivotal piece and unable to travel far. Trust is precisely the pivot of a relation, letting both sides cross over time not yet arrived.

The endurance of learning likewise requires "closeness." If one regards the Way as an external burden, studying only out of fear of one's teachers and elders, one stops the moment supervision is removed. True learning is gradually drawing close to benevolence and righteousness, feeling within them something that truly settles one's life. Yan Hui, though living on a basket of rice and a gourd of water, did not let this change his joy, because what he had learned had already become what he loved, needing no external reward to sustain it. If the Way remains forever distant from the heart, diligence and hardship can hardly last long.

Closeness can also absorb correction, keeping endurance from hardening into rigidity. Only when people feel close to one another do they dare speak the truth; only when ruler and minister feel close to one another can remonstrance find its way in; only when teacher and student feel close to one another do questions dare to be raised. If an order that appears stable on the surface is sustained only by fear, errors will be covered over, layer upon layer, and it must eventually collapse. The Way that can endure does not suppress change, but maintains communication, so that when change comes the relation can still adjust.

That the Way of Qian, being easy to know, wins closeness shows that endurance comes from brightness, not from mystery. People sometimes mistakenly believe that maintaining authority requires keeping others unable to fathom them, but in fact being unfathomable can only breed fear, not closeness. Fear may produce short-term obedience; only closeness can produce shared responsibility carried together. That the virtue of the worthy can endure is precisely because their inner and outer selves are one and the same, letting others dwell with them long without weariness, and trust them through every change.

XXXII. "Having Merit, It Can Grow Great": Greatness Is Not Momentum, but the Expansion of the Scope of Achievement

Only after there is merit can there be greatness; this sequence cannot be reversed. People of the world often seek great renown, great position, and great scale first, and only afterward try to make up the actual effect; the Yi, however, says that a matter must first have real, substantial effect before it possesses the condition for expanding into greatness. What cannot be accomplished in a small way, if suddenly magnified, will only magnify its flaws along with it. Only when one can rectify one's own person, harmonize one's household, and bring order to one's town can one gradually extend this further and wider.

"Can grow great" is not "must grow great." Merit provides the possibility, but one must still gauge the time and the configuration. A good policy effective in one locality must, when extended to the whole realm, take custom and terrain into account; a method of teaching that succeeds with one person cannot be applied to the multitude without first discerning their differing talents and dispositions. Kun's bringing things to completion respects difference, and so the expansion of merit cannot rely on mechanical duplication. Greatness must accommodate the multitude; only by being able to accommodate the multitude does it avoid losing its simplicity.

Master Meng, discussing how extending kindness can secure the four seas, cited King Xuan of Qi's compassion at the sight of a trembling ox being led to slaughter, demanding that this immediate feeling be extended to the common people. The logic here is precisely expanding from an existing sprout. It is not manufacturing a new benevolent heart, but letting the compassion already present not be obscured by outward voice and appearance. That one's kindness could reach an animal, and yet one's merit does not reach the common people, shows that the reach of the heart's function has been blocked by private opinion. Extend it and fill it out, and merit can grow great.

Master Xun's emphasis on accumulation is likewise a matter of small becoming great. An individual's accumulated practice of ritual propriety and righteousness forms virtuous character; the multitude, each holding to their proper share and righteousness, forms an age of order. Greatness does not descend from Heaven, but is the convergence of countless small actions within institutions and moral instruction. A mountain is built from accumulated earth, the sea from accumulated water, and a state's order, likewise, from the accumulation of countless everyday acts of fairness, trustworthiness, and diligent labor. To see only the great decisions of great figures, and not the small merits of the multitude, is not to understand the Way of Kun.

The Most High said, "The sage never strives to be great, and thereby is able to accomplish his greatness." Not striving to be great means not first claiming a great name for oneself, not pressing down the small with the great; and it is precisely because he does not contend, does not harm the multitude of things, that he is instead able to accomplish greatness. That the rivers and seas, being good at lying below, become king of the hundred valleys, likewise accomplishes their vastness through accommodation. The Yi's "having merit, it can grow great" communicates with this: greatness is the result of achievement naturally expanding, not a posture of self-aggrandizement.

Great political achievement should be measured by the people's livelihood, not by figures of territory. If the land grows broader while the people grow more impoverished, this cannot be called great merely because it is broad; if the treasury grows richer while the countryside withers, this cannot be called achievement merely because it is rich. A truly great undertaking is one that lets more people be nourished, more relations be set right, and more kinds of things fulfill themselves. If greatness departs from the completion of things, it retains only outward appearance.

Nor need an individual mistake the possibility of greatness for a requirement that everyone occupy a high position. A person who, in his own place, fully carries out his human relations and duties, so that those around him benefit, has already achieved merit; his conduct can move others, and his virtue can be transmitted to later students -- and this already holds the possibility of greatness. Greatness is measured not only by the scope covered by power, but also by whether one's righteousness and principle penetrate through time. Many worthy people of antiquity never attained high position in their whole lives, and yet their words and conduct have been transmitted for a long time -- this is precisely the greatness of virtue and achievement.

XXXIII. Endurance Is Virtue, Greatness Is Achievement

"What can endure is the virtue of the worthy; what can grow great is the achievement of the worthy." Here, for the first time, the text lands explicitly on the worthy person. Everything before seemed to speak of Heaven, Earth, Qian, and Kun, and only here does it become clear: observing Heaven and Earth is not meant to satisfy abstract speculation, but to accomplish a person's virtue and achievement. The ease and simplicity of Qian and Kun, through closeness and merit, are transformed into a life practice that can endure and grow great. A person does not discuss the Way apart from Heaven and Earth, but forms himself and completes things by modeling himself on Heaven and Earth.

Virtue leans toward what is formed inwardly -- the stable character a person forms through sustained practice over time. To endure means not changing because of gain or loss, not being cast aside because of hardship or success, not indulging oneself simply because no one is watching. Virtue that can be sustained for only a day cannot be called accomplished; if it appears only in favorable circumstances and is lost in adversity, it likewise cannot be called enduring. The virtue of the worthy is like the revolving of sun and moon, the coming and going of cold and heat -- its expression differs across different circumstances, and yet its fundamental direction never wavers.

Achievement leans toward what is formed outwardly -- the effect produced when virtue enters into human affairs. Cultivating oneself so that kin and friends benefit, governing so that the people find peace, establishing teaching so that later students have a path, fashioning implements so that daily life is more convenient -- all of these can be called achievement. Achievement does not belong only to those who occupy high position. The farmer who tills diligently so that household and state have food, the artisan who works skillfully so that implements are reliable, the teacher who teaches even a single person to become fully human -- all have their achievement. Greatness need not mean grand scale in the immediate present, but that what is accomplished accords with the principle of ceaseless generation, and can be expanded and passed on.

Virtue and achievement are like Qian and Kun -- they cannot be separated. Virtuous intention without achievement leaves goodness confined to a single person; achievement without a root in virtue may be swayed by shifting interest. When the Master said, "Cultivate oneself so as to give others peace" and "cultivate oneself so as to give the common people peace," cultivating oneself comes first and giving others peace follows, and yet this does not mean waiting until one has become a complete sage before beginning to help others. Cultivating oneself and giving others peace promote one another: within the work of giving others peace, virtue is tested; and as virtue deepens day by day, the scope of what is given peace likewise grows wider.

The sequence set out in the Great Learning (Daxue) -- manifesting bright virtue, renewing the people, resting in the highest good, and the sequence of investigating things, extending knowledge, making one's intentions sincere, rectifying one's heart, cultivating one's person, ordering one's household, governing one's state, and bringing peace to all under Heaven -- can likewise be understood through the relation between virtue and achievement. Manifesting bright virtue is not goodness kept to oneself in a private chamber; it must renew the people. Bringing peace to all under Heaven is likewise not an external technique apart from sincerity of intention and rectification of heart. Only when inner and outer run through one another is the practice complete. Though this passage offers no textual gloss here, its pre-Qin Confucian spirit communicates with the Xici.

Master Meng's statement that in adversity one perfects oneself alone, and in success one perfects the whole world together, is often misread as meaning that one has only virtue in adversity and only achievement in success. In fact, perfecting oneself alone already has its influence on kin, friends, and later students, and perfecting the whole world together must still be rooted in inner virtue. Adversity and success change the scope in which one's undertaking is carried out, but do not change the direction toward which benevolence and righteousness point. Endurance keeps a person from abandoning himself when unsuccessful; greatness keeps a person, when successful, from seeking only for himself.

Master Xun, by contrast, places even greater stress on virtue and achievement being realized through ritual propriety, law, and institution. An individual's good intention is not sufficient to govern a complex group; it requires division of duties, statutes, moral instruction, and the example of a teacher. The achievement of the worthy therefore lies not only in personally doing good deeds, but also in establishing an order that lets the multitude accomplish things together. If the institution is good, it can continue to function even after its founder is gone -- and this is precisely where the greatness and the endurance of achievement intersect.

XXXIV. Why the Virtue of the Worthy Is Measured by "Endurance"

Time is the surest test of whether virtue is genuine or false. Momentary generosity may arise from excitement; momentary reverence may arise from fear; momentary integrity may arise simply from having nothing worth taking. Only when a person holds fast through poverty and low station, through wealth and honor, in solitude where no one sees, and under the gaze of the multitude, can one see that virtue has truly been formed. Hence endurance is not an honor added onto virtue, but virtue's own inner mark.

The Master said, "Only when the year turns cold do we know that the pine and cypress are the last to wither." In ordinary times, grasses and trees all flourish alike and are hard to distinguish; when severe cold arrives, the nature of the pine and cypress is revealed. A disordered age, hardship, and the lure of profit are all a person's "cold season." To hold to one's benevolence and righteousness under pressure does not mean feeling no fear or pain at all, but that pain cannot take away one's resolve. The firmness of virtue lies here, and the yielding of virtue lies here too: firmness keeps one unbending; yielding lets one endure prolonged hardship without breaking.

That Yan Hui could go three months without departing from benevolence was already highly praised by the Master; his other disciples could reach it only for a day or a month at a time, showing how difficult it is to sustain benevolent virtue continuously. A person can occasionally have a benevolent heart; the difficulty lies in letting benevolence become a stable way of life. Endurance requires the closeness that being easy to know produces: not forcibly suppressing oneself, but the heart truly drawing close to benevolence. Only when this closeness runs deep can outward temptation fail to easily move it.

Master Zeng, at the point of death, had his disciples uncover his hands and feet, describing a lifetime of guarding himself with trepidation, as though facing a deep abyss, as though treading on thin ice. The endurance of virtue is not easy self-satisfaction, but is so often accompanied by reverent caution. The more a person believes he has already succeeded, the more easily he indulges himself; the worthy person, knowing that virtue and achievement are boundless, never dares to grow careless throughout his life. That Qian's vigor never ceases and Kun's depth knows no bound both mean that one cannot stop simply because a single task has been completed.

The Most High said, "Knowing contentment brings no disgrace; knowing when to stop brings no danger; thereby one can endure long." Endurance also depends on knowing when to stop. If a person, after achieving success, becomes insatiably greedy, his virtue and achievement will be destroyed by his own expansion; if, even amid great renown, he still contends for more, those close and trusting to him will turn to resentment and departure. The revolving of sun and moon has its retreat; the coming and going of cold and heat has its alternation; the worthy likewise knows when to advance and when to withdraw. Endurance is not eternal expansion, but the ability to draw back and preserve oneself at the proper time.

State institutions likewise must be tested by endurance. Severe punishment and harsh law may check disorder in the short term; whether they can endure depends on whether the people's hearts are at peace, whether officials can hold to their duty, and whether resources can be sustained. If a policy exhausts the people's strength in exchange for momentary achievement, it lacks the virtue of the worthy. The endurance of virtuous governance does not mean the institution is never adjusted, but that its adjustments never depart from the fundamental root of nurturing the people, fairness, and sincerity.

XXXV. Why the Achievement of the Worthy Is Measured by "Greatness"

The greatness of achievement is not how much personal renown one occupies, but how broad the scope of things completed and how deep their influence. If an undertaking accomplishes something only for its own founder, it cannot be called the achievement of the worthy; only when it lets the multitude each find their proper place, and continues to grow even after its founder has departed, does it approach greatness. Qian initiates without claiming possession, and Kun completes things without contending -- both attribute their achievement to ceaseless generation itself.

That the Master taught without discrimination of social class opened learning to people of every background; the greatness of his achievement lies in his having opened a path by which anyone could advance in virtue through learning. The Master did not rely on his own single intelligence to handle everything for his disciples, but through question and answer let each disciple attain understanding for himself. When Zilu asked about the same matter as another disciple, the Master's answer differed according to each one's temperament -- this kind of completion does not manufacture identical disciples, but lets each fulfill his own talent.

Master Meng, traveling among the feudal lords to advocate the kingly Way and benevolent governance for the sake of the whole world, did not take his own official salary and position as his final aim. Though his counsel was sometimes not adopted, and its immediate effect limited, it still preserved and elaborated a Way that could grow great. The "greatness" of an achievement looks not only at success or failure at the time, but also at whether the principles it establishes can pass through changing circumstances to provide judgment for those who come after. The capacity for greatness is an inner measure, not entirely the same as already being great.

Master Xun's teaching and writing, and his disciples each achieving something of their own, brought his theory of ritual propriety, righteousness, and the grouping and dividing of people into pre-Qin political thought as well. If a school of thought serves only a handful of people's own appreciation, it cannot be great; only when it can explain why human groups need distinction, how desire should be regulated, and how learning should be accumulated, and can serve as a reference for actual governance, does it have the function of completing things. The greatness of learning does not lie in obscure and difficult language, but in its ability to let people know and let people follow.

Mozi's disciples went to the aid of besieged cities and put the doctrine of "against aggression" into concrete action, showing that the achievement of a doctrine lies not only in words. Though his teachings on frugality and against elaborate music were much disputed by the Confucian tradition, the practical spirit of stopping aggression and aiding the weak, for the sake of the whole world, can still be seen as achievement. That the various pre-Qin masters came to form distinct schools was not only because each had his own doctrine, but because each attempted to bring about his own vision of order for the world.

Greatness of achievement also requires the capacity to accommodate those who come after and let them carry it on. If an undertaking can rely only on the personal prestige of its founder, and collapses the moment he is gone, it has not yet truly completed anything. Good ritual propriety, teaching method, and political institution should let those who inherit them know the root, while also leaving room to adjust according to the time. This is precisely ease and simplicity: the root is clear, and so it is not lost; the path is simple, and so it can be transmitted; room is left open, and so it can change.

XXXVI. Virtue and Achievement Advancing Together: Avoiding the Split Between Inner Sagehood and Outward Achievement

The learning of the noble person in the pre-Qin context rarely separates the cultivation of the heart and nature entirely from the affairs of the world. Serving one's parents, befriending others, dwelling in one's community, engaging in governance, offering sacrifice, and undertaking military campaigns are all places where virtue is manifested. A person who, in solitude, feels himself perfectly good, and yet in shared affairs behaves corruptly at every turn, cannot be said to have formed virtue; a person whose outward achievement is brilliant, and yet who oppresses the people through deceit and force, likewise cannot be said to possess the achievement of the worthy.

Qian's knowing of the great beginning leans toward the clarity of virtue; Kun's bringing things to completion leans toward the substance of achievement. Being easy to know produces closeness, letting virtue endure; being easy to follow produces merit, letting achievement grow great. The whole chapter, in its tightly ordered sequence, links the inner and the outer together. Virtue is not the ornament of achievement, and achievement is not the reward of virtue. Virtue determines the direction of an undertaking; the undertaking realizes the social meaning of virtue.

The danger of virtue without achievement is that self-restraint turns into self-enclosure. Fearing the complexity of worldly affairs and unwilling to take on responsibility, one professes purity while, in fact, letting the unrighteous occupy positions of power. Though the Most High valued non-action, he did not approve of abandoning the world; his non-action is action free of private, reckless intent, so as to achieve leaving nothing undone. Master Zhuang held thoughts of avoiding harm and preserving one's whole life, and also held a profound wariness of the corruption of power -- and this should not be simply invoked to justify indolence.

The danger of achievement without virtue is that utility swallows direction. The ability to enrich the state and strengthen its army, if it turns the people into mere tools; the ability to argue persuasively and win debates, if it destroys all trust in covenants; the ability to accumulate wealth, if it ruins mountains and marshes and seizes the farming season -- all of these may produce momentary achievement, but not the achievement of the worthy. The pre-Qin School of Law and techniques of statecraft provided tools of governance, while the Confucian and Daoist classics continually asked what kind of world such tools ought to serve. If Qian's beginning is deviant, the stronger Kun's capability, the deeper the calamity.

True advancement of virtue and achievement together so often begins from small things. Completing an entrusted task on time is achievement; not deceiving the person who entrusted it is virtue. Teaching one's children ritual propriety is achievement; being reverent toward one's own parents is virtue. Governing and repairing water conservancy is achievement; not using the project to enrich oneself privately is virtue. Every action has both an inner motive and an outer result at once, and cannot be split into two unrelated worlds.

Virtue and achievement also protect each other. Virtue keeps a person, upon achieving success, from growing arrogant, from claiming possession, from excess; achievement keeps virtue from sinking into self-satisfied complacency, continually subjecting it to the test of reality. When an undertaking meets setback, virtue keeps a person from changing direction; when virtue is in doubt, actual responsibility carried out in turn helps a person know himself. The rubbing of Qian and Kun against one another is precisely the structure of a complete personality.

XXXVII. "Through Ease and Simplicity, the Principle of All Under Heaven Is Attained": Principle Is Made Manifest Through Relation

This chapter carries ease and simplicity through to "the principle of all under Heaven is attained." "Principle" (li) here need not be built into a separate abstract world apart from the pre-Qin context. Heaven and Earth have above and below; movement and stillness have their constancy; the firm and the yielding can be distinguished; things have their gathering and dividing by kind; image and shape have their forming and changing; Qian and Kun have their beginning and doing -- the traceable pattern within these relations is the principle of all under Heaven. Principle lies both between things and within the nature of things themselves; a person attains it through observation and practice.

To "attain" it does not mean possessing all knowledge, but grasping the fundamental thread that runs all matters through. A person cannot personally know every blade of grass, every human feeling, every change in all the world, but if he understands that difference must complete itself in relation, that a beginning must be realized, that movement and stillness must accord with the time, that the firm and the yielding must assist each other, and that governance must be able to endure and grow great, he has grounds for judgment when facing a new situation. Ease and simplicity keep knowledge from being crushed under endless detail.

The Master said, "My Way is threaded through by one single thing." This one thread does not replace all matters with a single slogan, but means that conscientiousness and empathetic reciprocity (zhong shu) can be carried out across different relations. Serving one's parents, serving one's ruler and elders, befriending others, and treating the common people all have their own specific forms, and yet the root of fulfilling oneself and extending oneself to others is the same throughout. Master Zeng explained the one thread through conscientiousness and reciprocity, making the lofty Way easy to know and simple to follow. That a single principle threads through the ten thousand matters, and yet each of the ten thousand matters has its own fitting form, is precisely the marvel of ease and simplicity.

The Most High said, "The Dao generates the One, the One generates the Two, the Two generate the Three, and the Three generate the ten thousand things," and also used plainness, fewness, and what-is-so-of-itself to oppose vexatious disturbance. However numerous the myriad things, the Dao does not contend with them in number; however complex the world, its root does not prize complexity. That the Yi extends from Qian, Kun, the firm and the yielding, and the eight trigrams to the ten thousand transformations likewise builds a passage between a finite root and boundless manifestation. Attaining principle does not reduce the myriad things to poverty, but lets their diversity remain, while still threading through as one.

Master Xun stressed that "the Way is not the Way of Heaven, nor the Way of Earth, but that by which human beings find their way" -- placing even greater attention on the principle of ritual propriety and righteousness within human community. Even so, the human Way must still accord with the seasons of Heaven and examine the advantages of Earth; it cannot be suspended in a vacuum. The principle of governance lies in distinction forming the group, nurture bringing peace, teaching bringing transformation, and law bringing trust. If ease and simplicity are realized in the human Way, this means that names and roles are clear, ritual propriety and righteousness are plain, governmental decree is trustworthy, and the common people can follow.

The principle seen by the Guanzi so often lies in the use of things and the workings of configuration: the weighing of prices affects circulation, abundance or scarcity in the granaries affects the people's hearts, terrain and water conservancy affect farming and warfare. Such concrete patterns are likewise part of the principle of all under Heaven. If the Confucian tradition speaks only of virtue without examining the principle of things, good intention may produce bad results; if the technical schools examine only configuration and advantage without asking about benevolence and righteousness, they may know the lesser principle and lose the greater one. What ease and simplicity thread through must accommodate the timeliness of Heaven, the advantage of Earth, human feeling, and righteousness all at once.

XXXVIII. Attaining Principle Does Not Mean Everything Can Be Predicted

That the principle of all under Heaven is attained does not mean every detail of the future can be known in advance. The eight trigrams stir one another into motion, things influence one another, and human choice continually enters in as well, so that the concrete outcome is often unforeseeable. The Yi teaches a person to know the constant and comprehend change; it does not teach a person to boast of knowing everything. If "attaining principle" is understood as being able to control everything, one moves from revering Heaven to presuming upon Heaven.

Knowing principle lets a person know what must not be violated: the farming season must not be seized upon, the people's strength must not be exhausted, sincerity and trust cannot be deceived for long, what reaches its height must be guarded against, and what is faint at its beginning must be handled with caution. As for exactly when a rain will fall, how each step of a war will unfold, or when a particular person will have a change of heart, these still require observation as the matter unfolds. Principle provides direction and boundary; it does not eliminate the unknown.

The Sunzi holds that a victorious army first secures victory and only then seeks battle, stressing calculation in the temple and knowing both the enemy and oneself, and yet it also says that victory in war is never repeated in the same form, and that one must respond to the enemy's shape in boundless ways. The more thorough the preparation, the more one knows that, facing the actual enemy, one cannot simply copy old methods. One who truly knows principle is all the more cautious, because he sees how complex relations are; one who half-knows is instead prone to using a single piece of experience to judge the whole world.

Master Guiguzi's discernment of a person's speech and expression must also be repeatedly tested and confirmed; one cannot judge a person's whole life on the basis of a single probe. Human feeling has its constancy, and yet it can also be changed by interest, closeness or distance, fear, and shame. Knowing its constancy lets one prepare; seeing its change requires responding to it. Ease and simplicity give judgment its guiding thread; they do not give arbitrary conclusion an excuse.

Divination itself is likewise a seeking of clarity in the face of the unknown. If the future were entirely controllable, there would be no need for divination; if it were entirely without principle, divination would be of no use either. Precisely because change has its principle and yet remains concretely undetermined can a person, through the image of a hexagram, reflect on time and position and make a cautious choice. Drawing fortune in divination does not mean one may abandon effort; drawing misfortune does not proclaim inevitable defeat. Fortune and misfortune are born of gathering and dividing, advancing and withdrawing, and a person's own cultivation of virtue and correction of fault can still change the configuration that follows.

Reverent wariness before the unknown is part of ease and simplicity. True simplicity does not treat one's own model as though it were Heaven and Earth themselves; true ease does not exaggerate what is momentarily knowable into omniscience. Qian's knowing of the great beginning is grasping the fundamental point of departure; Kun's bringing things to completion demands entering the concrete process and accepting correction there. Only when knowing when to stop is matched with the ability to act does one truly attain principle.

XXXIX. "One's Place Is Formed in the Very Midst of It": A Person's Position Is Not Self-Conferred, but Achieved

The whole chapter finally returns to "one's place is formed in the very midst of it." "The very midst" is the midst of Heaven and Earth, and also the midst of Qian and Kun, the midst of the myriad things, the midst of change. A person does not form his place by fleeing Heaven and Earth, nor by standing above Heaven and Earth issuing commands. A person, observing image and examining shape, knowing beginnings and completing things, loving his kin and establishing merit, takes part in ceaseless generation through virtue and achievement, and only thus forms his place within it.

"Forming one's place" differs from "occupying a position." Occupying a position relies only on an outward title, while forming one's place demands that virtue and achievement correspond to the position. A ruler holding the ruler's position must be benevolent toward the people; a minister holding the minister's position must be loyal to his duty; a father holding the father's position must be kind in his teaching; a son holding the son's position must be filial and respectful. Name and position first give the framework of responsibility; only sustained fulfillment of that responsibility over time truly establishes the position. To occupy a position without carrying out its Way is a position in form only, not yet formed in substance.

Human nobility is likewise seen from this. A person can observe the patterns of Heaven and Earth, examine what suits the myriad things, reflect on fortune and misfortune, choose among groups and kinds, adjust the firm and the yielding, regulate movement and stillness, and assist transformation and growth through action. Birds, beasts, grasses, and trees each fulfill their own nature; a person carries one further layer of conscious responsibility. Yet this consciousness is no privilege, but a burden. The more a person is able to know, the less he can plead ignorance as an excuse; the more he is able to act, the less he can act recklessly on the strength of his own power.

The Doctrine of the Mean says, "Only one who can fully realize his own nature can fully realize the nature of others; only one who can fully realize the nature of others can fully realize the nature of things; only one who can fully realize the nature of things can assist the transforming and nurturing power of Heaven and Earth; and only one who can assist the transforming and nurturing power of Heaven and Earth can form a trinity with Heaven and Earth." Forming a trinity with Heaven and Earth can precisely explain the forming of one's place. A person does not create the transformation of Heaven and Earth, but can assist it; he does not decide everything for the myriad things, but can let each fulfill its own nature. Forming a trinity is not the three parties contending for greatness, but a person, through his virtue and achievement, taking up the one place that ought to be his between Heaven and Earth.

Master Meng said that fully realizing the heart and knowing one's nature leads to knowing Heaven, and that preserving the heart and nurturing one's nature is the way to serve Heaven. Knowing Heaven does not mean gazing upward and then claiming some mystical enlightenment, but preserving one's original heart and extending benevolence and righteousness. Serving Heaven does not mean seeking some marvel apart from human relations, but cultivating oneself and awaiting one's fate, whether in adversity or success, whether long-lived or short-lived. A person's place is formed within fully realizing the heart and fully realizing his nature, not within any mysterious identity.

Master Xun placed still greater emphasis on being clear about the distinction between Heaven and humankind. Heaven has its constant operation, unaltered by any single person's rise or fall; a person should govern what can be governed and revere what lies within his own power. Praying for rain is not as good as repairing water conservancy; hoping for a good harvest is not as good as not seizing the farming season. Forming a trinity with Heaven and Earth does not confuse Heaven and humankind, but lets each fulfill its own office: Heaven carries out its seasons, Earth generates its resources, and humankind governs its ritual propriety and righteousness. Only after the distinction is made clear can cooperation follow -- and this runs in the same vein as the establishing of Qian and Kun's places.

What the Most High said -- "man models himself on Earth" -- also lets a person's forming of his place begin from humility. Earth does not contend, and yet it bears all things; Heaven does not speak, and yet it moves all things; the Dao does not act, and yet it completes all things. If a person wishes to form his place between Heaven and Earth, he cannot learn only the awe of thunder and lightning without learning the moistening of wind and rain; cannot learn only Qian's beginning without learning Kun's completion; cannot learn only loftiness and exaltation without learning lowliness. A person's true place holds humility, reverence, responsibility, and effect all together.

XL. A Person Dwelling in the Midst: Neither Master of the Myriad Things, Nor Without Any Role to Play

Pre-Qin thought so often seeks the correct path between two dangers: one is a person's arrogant self-exaltation, using private desire to enslave the myriad things of Heaven and Earth; the other is a person abandoning responsibility, pushing everything onto the Mandate of Heaven. The path given by the first chapter of the Xici is "one's place is formed in the very midst of it." A person is in the midst -- not above it, and not outside it either; he has his limits, and he also has what he is able to do.

Drought, flood, cold, and heat are not something a person can command -- this is his limit; repairing ditches and canals, storing granaries, and not seizing the farming season are what he is able to do. A person's temperament has its own bias, and his environment has its already-formed configuration -- this is his limit; choosing teachers and friends, practicing ritual propriety and righteousness, and reflecting on and correcting one's own faults are what he is able to do. A state has its historical customs, geography, and resources -- this is its limit; employing the worthy, establishing trust, nurturing the people, and rectifying the law are what it is able to do. Knowing one's limits keeps a person from acting recklessly; knowing what one is able to do keeps a person from indolence.

"Knowing one's fate" (zhi ming) is therefore not resignation to fate. The Master, at fifty, knew the Mandate of Heaven, and thereafter still studied tirelessly and taught without weariness, traveling widely to carry out the Way. Knowing one's fate keeps action from taking success, failure, praise, or blame as its sole measure, without abolishing action itself. Master Meng's statement that one should not waver over an early or long life, but cultivate oneself and await one's fate, is likewise fully exerting oneself and then peacefully accepting what lies beyond one's control. Full exertion and awaiting are matched together, just as Qian's knowing and Kun's doing still return, in the end, to the great transformation of Heaven and Earth.

The Most High's non-action likewise does not mean doing nothing at all. What non-action discards is reckless action, forced action, and private action, letting a person's action not destroy the myriad things' own inherent order. If water conservancy follows the lay of the land, half the effort brings great effect; if moral instruction follows the good sprouts already present in human feeling, the people draw close and it can endure; if governmental decree accords with the people's livelihood, it is easy to follow and achieves merit. The more an action accords with the Way, the fewer traces of artificial imposition it leaves behind -- and this is precisely a lofty and enlightened forming of one's place.

The forming of a person's place must also accept feedback from the myriad things. Barren land shows that tillage may have been unsuited to it; boiling resentment among the people shows that governance may have caused harm; a household growing estranged shows that closeness and righteousness may not have been fully realized. To regard all this only as the outside world's disobedience, unwilling to reflect on oneself, is to set oneself up as master. Kun's bringing things to completion demands looking at the result; Qian's knowing of the great beginning demands correcting the next beginning by that result. A person's place is formed through continual learning, not completed and self-conferred in a single morning.

XLI. From Heaven and Earth to a Single Thought: The Complete Circuit of This Chapter

We can now string the whole chapter together. Heaven above, Earth below -- Qian and Kun thereby take their places; above and below unfold, and the low and the high, the noble and the humble, each find their place; between Heaven and Earth there is movement and there is stillness, and the firm and the yielding can be distinguished; different things gather and divide, and a person's advance and withdrawal, taking and forsaking, cause fortune and misfortune to arise; Heaven manifests image, Earth forms shape, and change is thereby made visible. This moves from the great whole to the myriad things, from order to judgment.

Then the firm and the yielding rub against one another, and the eight trigrams stir one another into motion, showing that difference is not sealed off but transforms and generates through interaction; thunder and lightning drum, wind and rain moisten, the firm and the yielding both applied at once; the sun and moon revolve, cold and heat come and go, and change has its constancy; Qian forms the male, Kun forms the female, and the transformation of Heaven and Earth enters the generations of life. This moves from static position into dynamic generation.

Then, from Qian's knowing of the great beginning and Kun's bringing of things to completion, cosmic transformation and generation turn into human knowing and doing; Qian's ease and Kun's simplicity let the great Way be known and the work be followed; being easy to know produces closeness, being easy to follow produces merit; closeness lets a relation endure, merit lets an undertaking grow great; endurance forms the virtue of the worthy, greatness forms the achievement of the worthy. This moves from the virtue of Heaven and Earth into the virtue and achievement of a person.

Finally, ease and simplicity attain the principle of all under Heaven, and a person, through virtue and achievement, forms his place within it. The opening speaks of "place" from Heaven being exalted and Earth being lowly; the ending returns again to "forming one's place." The former place is the order shown by Heaven and Earth; the latter place is the actual position a person attains through cultivating virtue and accomplishing achievement. A person is already between Heaven and Earth at birth, and yet only truly forms his place when he has fully carried out his Way. The whole chapter forms a circuit from beginning to end.

This structure also shows that the study of the Yi cannot stop at any single level. To speak only of Heaven and Earth without human affairs becomes remote abstract speculation; to speak only of name and position without change becomes a rigid order; to speak only of change without constant principle becomes mere capricious cleverness; to speak only of virtue without achievement leaves nothing completed; to speak only of achievement without the great beginning may lose righteousness; to speak only of forming one's place without knowing humble dwelling within it leads to arrogant self-exaltation. Within a single chapter, the Way of Heaven, the Way of Earth, and the Way of Man run through one another, and yet each has its own distinct part. Heaven manifests through image, Earth completes through shape, and humankind takes part through knowing and doing; Qian is easy to know, Kun is capable through simplicity, and a person forms virtue and achievement through closeness and merit. To run through is not to erase difference, but to let difference complete itself. Just as the firm and the yielding rub against each other while each pole is preserved, only thus does change occur.

XLII. The Conclusion of This First Reading: Becoming Human Anew from the Place of Ease and Simplicity

If one must draw the nearest, most concrete conclusion from this first reading, it may be said: first lead oneself back from complex private intention into ease and simplicity. The Way of Heaven is vast, and yet it does not deceive; the completion of things by Earth is abundant, and yet it does not disturb. Many of a person's difficulties, though they certainly have outward circumstances, are also so often caused by inner curiosity, love of fame, and love of profit twisting into complication matters that were originally knowable and doable.

Serving one's parents should begin with reverence and love; making friends should begin with sincerity and trustworthiness; learning should begin with today's single chapter, single sentence, single act, single practice; holding office should begin with name and actuality corresponding, and completing what has been entrusted; governing the multitude should begin with not harming the people's time, not exhausting the people's strength, and reward and punishment being trustworthy. None of this dazzles, and yet it is precisely what is easy to know and easy to follow. If one does not do what is near at hand, seeking only some world-astonishing feat, Qian's beginning has no Kun to complete it; if one does only trivial tasks without asking after the direction of benevolence and righteousness, Kun's doing has no Qian to know it.

Nor does ease and simplicity make a person naive. It knows that groups and kinds have the upright and the deviant, and that fortune and misfortune will arise; it knows that thunder and lightning cannot be dispensed with, and that firm decisiveness cannot be lacking; it knows that human feeling and worldly configuration stir one another, and must be clearly discerned. It is only that all this discernment must, in the end, return to the correct and great root, rather than becoming infatuated with cleverness. Only one who can look upon complexity without losing simplicity, and face change without losing constancy, has truly matured.

For one who occupies a high position, ease and simplicity mean that governmental decree can be known, responsibility can be followed, intention is not deceptive, and achievement is attributed to the multitude. For one who occupies a lower position, ease and simplicity mean fulfilling one's duty without carelessness, holding to righteousness without flattery, knowing the time to advance or withdraw, and accomplishing things through actual work. High and low each have their own responsibility, and neither may demand only from the other. Heaven and Earth taking their places makes responsibility clear; Qian and Kun completing each other makes both sides need one another.

For one who studies the Yi, ease and simplicity mean not turning the images of the hexagrams into capital for showing off mystery. Observing image is meant to know time and position; discerning fortune and misfortune is meant to cultivate virtuous conduct; understanding change is meant to accomplish an undertaking. If, after consulting the oracle, one evades responsibility all the more, what one has learned runs contrary to this very chapter; if, through the image of a hexagram, one reflects on one's own firmness and yielding, closeness and distance, beginning and end, advance and withdrawal, then even without fully knowing everything, one is already walking on the Way of ease.

Heaven is exalted, and yet does not proclaim itself; Earth is lowly, and yet does not abandon itself. Thunder and lightning shake, and yet do not maintain their awe forever; wind and rain moisten, and yet do not contend for credit. The sun and moon move, and yet never lose their proper measure; cold and heat alternate, and yet together complete the year. Qian sets forth the great beginning; Kun completes the myriad things. Ease on one side, simplicity on the other -- and the principle of all under Heaven lies within them. What the worthy person learns is nothing other than making his own heart and resolve upright and bright like Qian, making his own action deep and substantial like Kun, letting people draw close to one another through what can be known, and letting shared undertakings be accomplished through what can be followed.

When a person can ask after righteousness at the point of beginning, and exert full effort at the point of completion; when he does not shrink back at the time for movement, nor act rashly at the time for stillness; when he is not arrogant in high position, nor resentful in low position; when his firmness holds fast to something, and his yielding accommodates something; when what he draws close to is upright, and what he does bears merit; when he does not claim his achievement once accomplished, and does not change himself amid hardship -- then he is no longer standing outside Heaven and Earth discussing the Yi, but taking part in Qian and Kun with every breath, every word, and every deed.

"One's place is formed in the very midst of it" is therefore not merely an abstract exclamation at the end of the chapter, but an invitation never fully completed in a lifetime. Heaven and Earth have already taken their places, and yet a person's place must be achieved day after day. A single upright thought today is Qian's knowing of the great beginning; a single completed task today is Kun's bringing of things to completion; making oneself approachable to others through sincerity today, and accomplishing matters through simplicity today -- from here, virtue and achievement begin to sprout. Sustained without ceasing, broad enough to accommodate -- a person, between Heaven and Earth, gradually becomes a true human being.

This is only a first entry into Chapter One of the Upper Xici. The path taken here moves from Heaven and Earth taking their places toward virtue formed through ease and simplicity, focusing on showing how Qian and Kun descend from the great cosmic image into the daily practice of human relations. The meaning of this first chapter is vast, and can still be unfolded again and again through different paths -- time and position, ritual and music, governance, self-cultivation, image and number, knowing and doing. But whatever path one enters by again, one must not forget the root seen this time: distinction is followed by mutual completion; constancy is followed by the capacity for change; a beginning is followed by the need for completion; and virtue is followed by the achievement it forms. Heaven and Earth do not become human on a person's behalf, but they show a person the path by which becoming human can endure and grow great.

XLIII. Further Reflection One: Viewing "Taking One's Place" Through Ritual Propriety, Viewing "Mutual Stirring" Through Music

If one views this chapter once more through the pre-Qin Confucian teaching of ritual propriety and music, Heaven and Earth taking their places is like ritual propriety, and the firm and yielding stirring one another is like music. Ritual propriety gives above and below, closeness and distance, elder and younger, inner and outer, each their distinction; music lets differing sounds correspond and the feelings of the multitude communicate. Ritual propriety without the flow of music easily sees only rank and not closeness; music without the regulation of ritual propriety easily sees only harmony and sameness and not responsibility. That the Yi speaks of taking one's place and mutual stirring in sequence is precisely like ritual propriety and music, neither of which can be neglected.

The root of ritual propriety lies not only in human institution. Seeing that Heaven and Earth have their order, the four seasons their measure, and the myriad things their distinctions, people established regulated forms within their shared life. Mourning rites regulate grief through grief itself; sacrificial rites form reverence through reverence itself; guest rites fix deference through the act of association itself. Ritual propriety settles feeling into position, so that it is neither suppressed to the point of extinction nor allowed to overflow into disorder. Hence the gradations and roles of ritual propriety should perfect feeling and righteousness, not replace them.

Music, meanwhile, lets positions already distinguished communicate with one another once more. Within the ancestral temple, singing poems and playing music let the feeling between ancestor and descendant carry on; within the community wine-drinking ceremony, beyond the bowing, ascending, and descending, there is also song and music, letting elder and younger draw close; court assemblies and military gatherings likewise use rhythm and tone to align the resolve of the multitude. Music is no mere idle accompaniment, but what gives order its living feeling. The "stirring" in the eight trigrams stirring one another into motion carries precisely this quality of flowing without stagnation.

Master Xun said that music unites and harmonizes, while ritual propriety distinguishes and differentiates; sameness brings mutual closeness, difference brings mutual reverence. Mutual closeness and mutual reverence together sustain communal life. Closeness without reverence easily becomes over-familiar; reverence without closeness easily becomes estranged. This chapter, deriving closeness from being easy to know, and establishing distinction from Heaven and Earth taking their places, contains both these sides at once. The Way of Qian is bright and clear, letting people trust and draw close to one another; the Way of Kun is simple and compliant, letting people work together and achieve merit; closeness and merit keep position from being merely an external constraint, and turn it instead into a shared achievement.

Ritual propriety and music also show that "the mean" (zhong) is not compromise. Ritual propriety is elaborate where elaboration is called for, and reduced where reduction is called for; music grieves where grief is called for, and rejoices where joy is called for. Only when cold and heat each reach their fullest extent in their own season do they together complete the year; only when thunder and lightning, wind and rain each fully perform their own function do they together complete things. If everything is halved to avoid conflict, the result is neither drumming nor moistening. The mean lies in fitting the moment; harmony lies in each thing attaining its own proper share.

Hence, reading "the noble and the humble take their places," one must at the same time read the later "wins closeness"; reading "the firm and the yielding are distinguished," one must at the same time read "rub against one another"; reading "the eight trigrams stir one another into motion," one must remember the earlier "Qian and Kun are established." Ritual propriety and music correct each other's bias, keeping order from growing rigid and change from falling into disorder. Only when human institutions can do likewise are they worthy of being called modeled on Heaven and Earth in forming one's place.

XLIV. Further Reflection Two: Those Who Govern a State Must Above All Beware "Beginning Without Completion"

In governing a state, it is easiest to display Qian and hardest to fully realize Kun. Issuing edicts, establishing new categories, and launching great projects all carry the momentum of a beginning; the day-by-day administration, granary storage, water conservancy, agriculture and sericulture, and judicial affairs are the meticulous work of completion. Beginning so often brings a person renown; completion is so often borne by the multitude. If those above love beginning and dislike completing, so that new policies emerge one after another while old duties are neglected, the people become the ground on which orders are repeatedly tested.

Qian's knowing of the great beginning first demands that, before issuing an order, one examine the whole situation: whether the laws will conflict with one another, where the funds will come from, whether those appointed can bear the task, whether the common people can sustain it, and who specifically benefits and who bears the loss -- all of this must be foreseen. One cannot assume the result must be good simply because the intention is good. A good beginning is not enthusiasm, but knowing what it depends on.

Kun's bringing things to completion, meanwhile, demands listening to feedback during implementation: whether a decree is distorted once it reaches the counties and villages, whether the powerful exploit the occasion to encroach upon the people, whether officials seek credit through excessive paperwork, whether the originally set deadline accords with the farming season -- all of this must be examined. If the conditions below cannot reach those above, Qian and Kun are severed from each other; those above may still believe they have made a good beginning, while harm has already been done on the ground. Whether wind and rain truly moisten things is judged by the grasses and trees, not by the self-praise of the one who sent the rain.

The Guanzi's emphasis on the people's wealth, the advantages of terrain, granary storage, and governmental command is precisely because a state cannot run on moral proclamation alone. Master Meng corrected the direction of governance with benevolence and righteousness, and also gave benevolent governance concrete shape through the well-field system, the farming season, the tax system, and the nurturing of the people. Considering the two together, one can see: virtuous intention must enter into the system of resources and finance, and the system must submit to the greater righteousness of nurturing the people.

The Most High warned against too many prohibitions, too many sharp instruments, too much cunning skill, and too many laws -- likewise looking back at the Way of governance from the result of completing things. Those above may believe that the more they do, the better, while the people grow ever poorer and the state ever more confused. The political wisdom of non-action lies in discerning which matters must be done, and which affairs, caused by private desire, ought never to have arisen at all. Removing the actions that disturb the people is itself a great action.

Whether political achievement deserves to be called the achievement of the worthy must be tested through four measures: closeness, merit, endurance, and greatness -- whether the people are willing to draw close, whether the matter has truly achieved merit, whether the institution can endure, and whether the benefit can be extended broadly. Satisfying only one of these is not enough to be complacent about. A severe decree may achieve merit without closeness; a generous reward may win closeness without enduring; a small kindness may endure without growing great; expansion may appear great without any real merit. Only when all four run through together does one approach the governance of ease and simplicity.

XLV. Further Reflection Three: Scholars Must Above All Beware "Knowing Without Doing"

Studying the Yi most easily accumulates terminology, and most rarely changes one's disposition. Knowing Qian and Kun, the firm and the yielding, image and shape, fortune and misfortune, and yet still being rash, biased, unreliable, or evasive of responsibility when facing actual matters -- this means knowledge has not yet entered into Kun's doing. Qian's knowing of the great beginning demands seeing the principle; Kun's bringing things to completion demands realizing what has been seen. Every sentence one reads should be asked how it becomes action in daily life.

Reading "movement and stillness have their constancy," one can observe one's own rhythm of work and rest, speech and silence, advance and withdrawal. When it is time to listen, does one rush to speak instead; when it is time to decide, does one hide behind caution$1 Does diligent study turn into restlessness; does rest turn into laziness$2 Reading "things gather by kind," one can observe whom one draws close to as teacher and friend, what one hears daily, and what one values in conversation. The language a person dwells in for a long time gradually shapes the kind of person he becomes.

Reading "thus fortune and misfortune arise," one can stop attributing every gain and loss to outside circumstance. Within a single failure, one must discern what came from being out of accord with the time and position, what came from trusting the wrong person, what came from excessive firmness or excessive yielding, and what, despite full effort, still lay beyond one's own control. Self-reflection does not mean forcing all responsibility upon oneself, but distinguishing what can be changed from what cannot be controlled. Knowing what can be changed gives rise to the next great beginning.

Reading "easy to know, capable through simplicity," one should watch whether one uses complexity and difficulty to conceal a lack of achievement. Having many notes -- has even one of them been carried out$3 Having lofty discussions -- has even one friend or relative genuinely benefited because of oneself$4 Repeatedly changing method -- has one truly persisted with any of them$5 If learning does not make a person more sincere, more steady, and more able to accomplish things, it may be nothing more than words stirring against words, never having moistened anything at all.

The Master stressed learning and, at due times, practicing what one has learned, and reviewing the old to know the new -- learning is not a single act of possession. Only when old knowledge enters a new situation does it reveal what was previously not understood. Enduring virtue comes from repetition without becoming mechanical: what one encounters differs day by day, and yet the Way of conscientiousness and empathetic reciprocity is continually practiced anew. Like the sun and moon revolving day after day, appearing the same, and yet never occupying quite the same position twice.

Teachers and friends are indispensable here. A person always has blind spots in viewing himself; the honest counsel of a friend, like the firm and the yielding rubbing against each other, brings hidden bias to light. Choosing a group that only praises oneself brings comfort in the short term, but mutual obscuring over time; choosing those who hold to the Way and can correct one's faults may bring displeasure, and yet lets virtue be renewed day by day. That "virtue is never alone; it is sure to have neighbors" does not mean waiting for like-minded people to arrive on their own, but also includes actively drawing close to those who surpass oneself.

XLVI. Further Reflection Four: Resolving Doubt Does Not Mean Seeking a Single, Eternally Unchanging Answer

The Yi is bound up with the resolving of doubt, but the method of resolving doubt taught in this chapter is not to store up a fixed answer for every category of problem. It first lets a person discern Heaven and Earth, order of position, movement and stillness, the firm and the yielding, group and kind, image and shape, and then examine their rubbing and stirring together with the coming and going of the seasons. A matter becomes doubtful so often because several relations are interwoven; resolving the doubt means making these relations clear once more.

Facing a choice between advancing and withdrawing, one can ask: is this a time for lying hidden, or a time for manifest use; would advancing overstep one's position, would withdrawing lose the opportunity$6 Facing a dispute, one can ask: does this call for firm decision on principle, or for yielding acceptance of a differing view; what is the great shared righteousness between the two sides, and what is the private opinion in which they differ$7 Facing the employment of a person, one can ask: what kind does this person gather with, do his words and deeds correspond, can he complete things if placed in this position$8

Facing a policy, one can ask: is its beginning correct, is its implementation simple, can the people follow it, can its short-term achievement endure$9 Facing one's own personal calling, one can ask: can what one knows become today's action, does what one does accord with the long-term direction$10 Asking in this way does not necessarily eliminate all uncertainty at once, but can reduce being swept along by momentary emotion.

The hexagram obtained through divination should likewise enter into this kind of reflection, rather than replace it. The image of a hexagram offers a structure for viewing, letting a person step back slightly from his existing preconceptions. It may point to relations such as danger, stopping, advancing, withdrawing, gathering, or scattering, but in the end it must still be examined and verified against reality. To treat the hexagram statement as a command that lets one evade judgment is to lose "Qian's knowing" altogether.

The Most High said, "One who knows others is wise; one who knows himself is enlightened." Resolving doubt is so often difficult precisely in self-knowledge. When a person seeks counsel, he may already harbor a desire, hoping only for permission; if the answer received does not match his heart, he asks again and again. True ease and simplicity first honestly acknowledges one's own desire, and only then weighs it by righteousness and by time and position. When the heart does not deceive itself, the problem is often already half clear.

Master Guiguzi's emphasis on listening in reverse and looking inward lets the speaker discern true feeling through the other party's response; this is useful for resolving doubt as well. One should not listen only to the voices that support oneself, but let different forces rub against one another. Yet such probing must not degenerate into manipulation, because the end point of resolving doubt remains forming virtue and completing things, not winning over others. Only one who can accommodate counter-evidence while holding to the greater righteousness has truly joined the firm and the yielding together.

XLVII. Further Reflection Five: How Not to Lose Oneself Amid Change

A person often carries one worry: if everything changes with the moment, will one's integrity also dissolve away$11 This chapter's answer lies already in "movement and stillness have their constancy; the firm and the yielding are distinguished." Change has its constancy; weighing according to circumstance has its boundary. What is called according with the time is the fitting expression of one and the same righteousness within different circumstances, not the arbitrary replacement of righteousness according to gain or loss.

Sincerity and trust are constant, and yet if someone entrusts one with an unrighteous task, one cannot help him do evil merely because one has already agreed; upholding ritual propriety is constant, and yet amid famine or mourning and disorder, its forms may be weighed and adjusted; loving one's kin is constant, and yet if a kinsman has done wrong, one cannot help cover up his crime of harming others. The form may change; the root does not fail. Master Meng's teaching that "only righteousness is where he stands" governs trustworthiness and follow-through by righteousness, and does not let a minor point of conduct instead harm the greater righteousness.

The firm and the yielding are likewise so. Using firmness to remonstrate directly today and yielding to comfort someone tomorrow does not show a fickle temperament, but benevolence and righteousness meeting different needs. A physician attacks an excess condition and tonifies a deficient condition, both aiming to save life; one who governs must check violent disorder and nurture a weary people, both aiming to give the people peace. If one knows only a single method, however good the intention, it may still cause harm.

The Most High's valuing of the yielding and holding to the weak addresses a bias in the world toward preferring strength and contending to be first; it does not turn the yielding into a new coercive rule. Master Zhuang's valuing of according with things' own self-transformation breaks through self-centeredness; it does not mean a person should remain unmoved by every kind of suffering. Reading the words of the various schools, one must always examine what bias they seek to remedy and what era they addressed, and not cut a single sentence out and let it harden into a rigid rule.

Not losing oneself also depends on "what one draws close to." Under the pressure of change, a person easily becomes either arbitrary or a mere follower of the crowd. Drawing close to teachers and friends who hold to the Way can remind one of the root; preserving the classics and ritual propriety and righteousness can keep judgment from being driven only by what is immediately at hand. Tradition here is not a refusal of new change, but gives change a deep root. Only when the root of a tree runs deep can its branches and leaves bend with the wind without being uprooted.

In the end, what a person holds to is not any single posture, but the Way of ceaseless generation: not harming the public good for private interest, not oppressing the weak with the strong, not sacrificing what endures for momentary gain, not substituting empty words for actual doing. Holding to this great beginning, one's action may change a thousand times over; losing this great beginning, however much the form resembles ancient ritual, it is only an empty shell.

XLVIII. Further Reflection Six: Six Common Misreadings

The first misreading turns "Heaven is exalted, Earth is lowly" directly into a worship of power. The high and low of Heaven and Earth are first of all natural positions; Qian and Kun each have their own irreplaceable virtue. A high position among human beings must be achieved through virtue and achievement, and cannot be used, by itself, as proof that one already possesses virtue. If occupying a high position harms those below, this directly violates the mutual completion of Heaven bestowing and Earth generating.

The second misreading treats Qian and Kun as two things sealed off from each other. This chapter goes on immediately to speak of rubbing and stirring against one another: Qian's beginning needs Kun's completion, and Qian's ease together with Kun's simplicity jointly attain the principle of all under Heaven. The two are distinct and yet not separate. To speak only of opposition without mutual completion, or only of mutual completion without distinction, is incomplete either way.

The third misreading equates the firm and the yielding with good and evil, or with male and female strength and weakness. The firm and the yielding are modes of function, and either can attain the mean, or either can lose its proper measure. A man must have yielding virtue, and a woman too holds firm integrity; everyone needs both the setting of resolve and the bearing of completion. That the Way of Qian forms the male and the Way of Kun forms the female is a great image of generation and transformation, not a warrant for violence and force on one side or submission on the other.

The fourth misreading treats fortune and misfortune as an external, predetermined fate. Fortune and misfortune arise from gathering by kind, dividing by group, and advance and withdrawal within time and position; the hexagram image reveals them, and yet a person must still cultivate virtue, correct fault, and respond to change. Revering fate does not mean shirking responsibility; being cautious in divination does not mean abandoning action. The more one understands the principle of fortune and misfortune, the more one should take responsibility before anything has taken shape.

The fifth misreading treats ease and simplicity as carelessness and shortcut. Ease is being upright, great, and knowable; simplicity is according with principle and being able to complete things. Complex reality still requires careful examination; long-term completion of things still requires diligent effort. Lazy simplicity refuses to acknowledge difference; true simplicity accommodates difference while grasping the root.

The sixth misreading understands "forming one's place" as occupying the center of everything. That a person is "in the midst" shows that he takes part among Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things, not that he lords over them. Forming one's place depends on virtue and achievement, not on self-conferral; it depends on assisting transformation and growth, not on enslaving the myriad things. The more a person is able to form his place, the more he knows humility and reverence.

Avoiding these six misreadings, this chapter shows its complete character: it establishes order, and also opens change; it affirms difference, and also demands mutual completion; it speaks of the Way of Heaven, and also returns to human affairs; it allows a person to act, and also restrains reckless action. Its words are few, but its meaning is not thin; its Way is easy to know, but its practice demands a whole lifetime.

XLIX. Further Reflection Seven: The End Point Is Still a Beginning

This chapter begins with Qian and Kun taking their places, and ends with forming one's place in the very midst of it. Yet forming one's place is not a stopping point. Today one's place is formed; tomorrow the time and configuration change again; today a matter is completed, and what is completed becomes, in turn, a new beginning. Virtue can endure, and so it must be renewed day by day; achievement can grow great, and so it must continually accommodate new people and new circumstances. The end point returns once more to the great beginning.

This circuit lets a person both dwell at peace and continue moving forward. He dwells at peace within the order Heaven and Earth already provide, not thrown into panic by change; he moves forward within the not-yet-exhausted generation of the myriad things, not growing complacent over some small success already achieved. Knowing his own limits, he is humble; knowing he has his own place, he is courageous. Humility is not retreat, and courage is not recklessness -- the two, once again, are a pairing of the firm and the yielding assisting each other.